The Sharks Feed
by nicholasakira
Summary: The Carcharodons, or Space Sharks, are one of the most brutal and secretive chapters of the Emperor's space marines. They forever voyage the abyss beyond the Imperium's borders. Now, as the Carcharodons' war shoal fleets once again bring madness and death to the enemies of Terra, their secrets shall be revealed.
1. Pure Black Eyes

Chaos forces had defeated the Blood Angels. The Black Legion and their allies were advancing after the routed loyalists as they fled through the woods. Iscariot and his squad of murderers had the honour of leading the hunt.

"_My lord, a second force has…"_

Screams and the buzz of chainswords came through the vox in Iscariot's helmet before it died. Had the Blood Angels regrouped?

"Brothers, answer! By Khorne, you cannot all be dead!" Iscariot yelled into the vox. The familiar repeating thunder of bolterfire in the distance lit up the night and the Black Legion squad formed a sheltron in reply. In the middle of the forest though, they were naked to an ambush. The most unskilled conscript could see that. Iscariot snarled at his men to stay silent as he sorted through the channels.

"Hyastus, I demand your reply!"

"_They are right on top of us!"_ behind Hyastus' voice, Iscariot could hear chainblades roaring. _"Tell me where they came from?"_ The signal died.

In a flash of plasma, the first of Iscariot's squad tumbled down. They were here too. Elite Black Legion bolters roared in answer at the woodlands around them.

"I can smell them. Blood for the blood…" something silenced the brother who had spoken. Chainswords roared, grenades burst among the sheltron and dust filled the air. A horde of giant shadows leapt out of the brown haze. The sheltron collapsed. Iscariot's bolter punched down one of the attacking shapes, but he could not kill them fast enough.

"We're surrounded!"

"No," growled Iscariot as his bolter clicked empty, "not like this."

"Dark gods take me."

"Drink deeply of me, Khorne."

"Not like this," Iscariot unsheathed his axe as the last of his squad went quiet. Iscariot caught a glimpse of a studded grey helm with pure black eyes.

Not a Blood Angel, something else.

A swinging chainsword blade filled Iscariot's vision.

* * *

"_**What rights do you have over us? I have seen chapters in the false Emperor's thrall who stand nearer to Khorne than I." –**__Alatar the Merciless to Asmodai_

* * *

"_Iscariot, speak."_

The vox bead did nothing but hiss wet static.

"_Iscariot? If you yet live, speak to your lord." _

Silence.


	2. Dark Places and Bad Things

How could such terrible things happen? How could his powerful father and the entire crew of freemen lose their ship? How could so many die in one place? Their dreams crushed, their property stolen, their wives murdered, their children enslaved?

The little boy stood stripped to the waist in the crowded, dark, cold room that his captors thrust him into. He was one of many taken in the raid, but in here he couldn't see anyone besides other boys, also bare-chested. He heard one boy whisper that the _Voyager of the Stars_ had exploded under the attacking ship's guns. If that was true than the little boy's entire world was gone. No more evening bells out on the observation deck with his father, daydreaming about becoming a member of the raider's crew with the rest of his older brothers. No more exciting war stories of piracy against Imperial shipping. The little boy cried a bit. He felt the bodies of other boys all around him, bumping into him, crushing him and staving off the cold with their own heat. How many were in here? There was no hope to count them all.

The lights grew brighter. Through cracks in the crowd and his own hot tears, the little boy saw the walls were metal grey, like the ship he had just been stolen from. When he heard screams ahead the little boy's heart grew tight. The boys around him shoved and stumbled back. Through the mass of bodies, the little boy saw a pale man with wheels for feet, a metal skull and four crab pincers, taking hold of two boys and wheeling away with them. The man, or whatever, did not even flinch when fists pounded at its pallid flesh. Through the throng, more of those clawed nightmares advanced on their ghastly wheels.

The little boy held still, not wanting to attract the dead eyes of those white monsters. His father always taught him to stay still and calm if there was fighting nearby that did not involve him. He did not even flinch as one of them wheeled up to him and grasped his wrists in its cold metal claws.

The little boy did not care to notice much of what came after. Tears blurred his vision and the yells of the other boy the wheeled thing grabbed filled his ears. The little boy was pulled through a dark place, then a bright place, then a dark place again. The wheeled creature pushed the little boy and the other boy into a room and retreated through the only exit, which hissed shut.

"How do we get out of here?" asked the other boy. The little boy said nothing, conserving his strength the way his father taught him. It was useless to rage against these metal walls. The little boy just sat down and thought hopeful things. Perhaps he would be given to his mother and she would hold him and love him and make this awful place and its awful inhabitants go away. It was a hard thought to keep the more he looked around. This room was slightly larger than a latrine stall, with a low oppressive ceiling and no windows. The metal walls glowed softly and the ceiling was made of glass. Squinting, the little boy saw dark nothingness through it.

HISS.

Two hidden compartments along the walls folded open like the security compartments back aboard the _Voyager of the Stars_. Unlike the _Voyager of the Stars, _these compartments held a single tiny object each instead of the large green safes that the adults kept their gold in. Reaching in, the little boy's tiny fingers grasped a large metal knife with jagged teeth. He lifted it out and examined it. It reminded him of the meat-knife that his mother never allowed him to touch. Looking, the little boy noticed the other boy had one two.

HISS.

From a higher point on the wall fell a curious mask with a plastic tube attached to it. The little boy fancied the tube looked like a cable. Looking at the mask on the floor, he realized it was an oxygen mask. It was different from the ones the engineers on the _Voyager of the Stars_ wore whenever they visited the oil room. The little boy scooped it up and examined it.

"Let us out!" yelled the other boy, slamming on the door. "I have a knife you idiots! My brother's an armsman!" He might have been telling the truth. He was big enough to be an armsman's brother. "He's got a bigger gun than any of you have ever seen! Let me out you Imperial animals! I'll get my brother to kill you all!" The little boy could hear another hiss over the other boy's yelling. He expected another mask to fall down. Instead, four tiny holes opened up near the ceiling. Water began to shoot into the little room in fat, powerful jets.

"Let me out!" roared the other boy, slamming his whole body against the door. "My friends are going to kill you all!" The water reached the little boy's ankles. He threw on the mask.

"Hey where's my mask!" screamed the other boy furiously at the door. "Where's my mask! You forgot my mask!" Water reached the back of the little boy's knees. He looked at his knife, then back at the other boy. There was only one mask and the water was rising.

"I want a mask!" shrieked the other boy as the water reached his waist. "Let me out!" He turned around, furiously facing the little boy. "Give me that mask you little bilge freak!" He held up his knife to threaten the little boy. "I'm an armsman! Give it to me!" The little boy held up his knife and shook his head. The other boy came forward, his wide eyes streaming tears. "Please, hand it over or I'll cut the tube and you'll die too."

"No," said the little boy.

"Please!" the other boy made a sudden rush for the little boy, as if thinking to take the mask right off him. The little boy flashed back, sloshing water about him as it reached his armpits. His arm shot forward and came back. The clear water turned a murky red around the other boy's body.

"Damn it!" the other boy shrieked in pain as he came on. The little boy stabbed twice more as the water covered his face. He breathed easily and could see the taller boy was still in front of him, now focused on holding his face towards the ceiling. Three open wounds marred his chest, which gushed red fog into the water. The jagged knife had been merciless to his unguarded flesh.

"No! Stop!" the other boy screamed. "Stop the water, please! I'll do any…" The water covered his face.

The little boy watched the other boy thrash around in the red water through the eyes of his oxygen mask. He did not close his eyes, making sure the other boy did not try to cut the tube that fed the little boy the life he was breathing in. When the other boy went still, the little boy sat down and sobbed. He didn't notice the water drain and hardly cared when the door opened and another wheel-legged man removed his mask. The little boy was allowed to keep his knife as he was carried through more darkness and into a second chamber, exactly like the first. He wiped his eyes and noticed he was not alone. A soggy boy with a knife already stood in here. The little boy knew he couldn't lose himself to his sadness. Maybe when this cruel game was done, he could have his mother. Hope kept him focused.

"There's going to be one mask I think," the soggy boy said.

"I think so too," the little boy said with one last sniffle.

HISS.

Another mask came out. The soggy boy was at it first and he began putting it on. The little boy remembered how putting on the mask made you blind. He exploited his two-second advantage as best he could. He only needed two seconds.

The soggy boy died before the chamber began to flood.

* * *

"**A working man without rest is a tired mind without strength. So he becomes clay in the hands of his betters, who may teach him as they wish" **–"On Changing the Values of the Unwilling" by Tsergi Iyatovich

* * *

Endless work, the little boy's life became endless work.

His eternity down here began after the drownings. One of those wheeled men had taken his knife away and dragged him from the cold body of the last boy he killed and led him to this dungeon where other surviving boys huddled. Twenty shovels, one for each boy, lined the brick walls of this soot-black enclosure. A sliding metal door opened to show wall an empty metal vault, perhaps the size of one of the common area mess halls. Opposite it, a second sliding metal door opened up to an identical vault, this one filled with sand. Through some simple mime, the wheeled man asked each boy to shovel the sand into the empty vault. A simple task, but by the sheer amount of sand, it was a huge labour, even for twenty boys. This new life looked like an unhappy one. The little boy wiped his eyes and sniffled.

"I…I guess we should," whispered a frail youth that the little boy knew from the shipboard work academy as Brendin.

"Sure, slave away," mumbled a fat boy as he picked at a dry cut in his gut that some boy had probably made before he drowned. The little boy felt tears dribble down his cheek as he picked up a shovel.

The wheeled man never left the room, watching the boys toil. It pursued boys who did not pick up a shovel, snapping and cutting them with its claws until they complied. If a boy fought back, the wheeled man would whistle some machine sound. The door would open and a dozen more wheeled men came in to subdue the rebel. The little boy saw more than one boy die this way. Brendin was one. A metal claw cut his neck and he never stopped bleeding. Some boys died when they tried to escape. They would try to explode out of the door when it opened to let a wheeled man in or out. A blonde boy named Gaver did make it outside, only to be taken back in, one piece at a time. No one tried to escape after that.

When they boys tried to converse, the wheeled man that stood vigil over them would play some terrible siren noise to silence them, sometimes slicing at the offenders. The little boy got cut more than anyone else he knew, for not shoveling hard enough and for talking. He couldn't keep himself silent whenever he spotted a boy from the _Voyager of the Stars _that he knew by face or name. His love for conversation slowly bled to death, one cut at a time. His tears stopped in time too. He grew no braver, he just grew more numb.

Each time the team of boys finished, the sliding doors would close. Wheeled men would come in and take the boys out, split the group up and each smaller group would be rotated into an identical room with a new set of boys, never more than twenty in all. Then they'd start shoveling all over again. Sleep and food were rare. Because of the constant rotating, bonding with his workmates was impossible. The little boy was hungry and sleepy. He wondered then that he had ever lived with his family of free people.

Once, he stabbed himself in the neck with his shovel. By now, he had seen other boys go mad and end their own lives. The little boy knew the wheeled man would not try to stop him. When no blood came out, the little boy gave up and continued shoveling with the other boys.

The little boy's world was now a lightless abyss of silence, shoveling sand, exhaustion and subjugation by those awful wheeled men. He lost track of how many times he had filled a vault with sand, only to be dragged before a new one. He stopped noticing the faces of the other boys around him. He stopped thinking about his parents. He realized that he had died aboard the _Voyager of the Stars _and this dark place was the horrible afterlife the Gods had damned him to. He stopped feeling the pain when the wheeled men hit him for moving too slow. Sometimes, close to the end, the little boy heard the voices of people he knew and hallucinated incomprehensible illusions as he trudged through the darkness with his shovel full of plain, useless sand. This only made him slower and the wheeled men hit him more.

* * *

Two power-armoured giants stalked through the dark corridor. They passed by a servitor, who scanned the wall with a white lamp, its crab-limbs welding a fractured grating together. A liquid stream of bright orange stars dripped from the servitor's work, only to disappear on the floor. In the light of the lamp, the giants were quickly revealed. The one on the left wore a grimacing white helmet, with a large red lens over the left eye. A curled insignia suggesting a winged double helix ran down his left pauldron. The other giant wore grey, though his helmet's pointed visor was white. They passed out of the light and were shadows again.

"How many and from what feeding were they taken, apothecary?" asked the grey-helmed giant.

"Seventy exactly, brother captain," the apothecary replied. "Into the usual ten to twenty-body teams. We took them three years ago. A pirate ship our war shoal fed upon. Veterans of the drowning chambers, like myself, and three years of the abyssal labour." The drowning chamber to cull them, the abyssal labour to break them.

"I am a veteran of the spear pits. I must confess, I never liked the drowning chambers. The killing is too forced. Not enough malice, it does not find what I look for in the men I hope to lead," the captain mused.

"And yet it is so, captain," the apothecary.

"Indeed. Seventy? Of how many captured?"

"We began with four thousand and ten."

"Casualty specifics?"

"All but three-hundred-and-twelve to the chambers. Forty-three killed for lack of discipline, one-hundred-eighty-one to exhaustion and eighteen suicides."

"Only forty-three to lack of discipline? That is unusually low for a pirate ship."

"Would you wish it had been higher, captain?"

"Cleary not. Projections?"

"Forty-one to Fifty-nine brothers captain. I already have the tenth company informed on the profiles of some individuals that seem promising. There are seven unlikelies. The techmarines are expecting their delivery within a year."

"A fine harvest apothecary. That will bring the number of brothers you have brought us above three hundred, if the spirits remain close with the initiates."

"The Emperor will wish it so. I will perform a blood ritual to improve the initiate's luck with the spirits, if you so allow." Beneath his helmet, the captain gave a soft grin.

"Keep enough animals alive for the induction triumphal, apothecary. And clean your quarters afterwards, personally. Do not grow slothful and pull servitors from the work queue, especially with the spirits eyes drawn on you and the Emperor listening. He on Terra may not like what he hears."

"As always I will obey, captain. Now, the harvest."

With the rustle of chains, the door to the holding cell cranked open. The fetid chamber had dried stains from excrement and blood hardened to its iron walls. Nine of the promised seventy boys stood tall against the wall. The protein rations and abyssal labour had worked nicely. Their limbs were thick with sinew and were it not for their untidy hair, bloody hands and dirty-smeared bodies they would be judged attractively healthy. The last boy did not stand. He was the little boy, now a bit bigger than before. He sat at the feet of the boy beside him, face down like an animal that was sick.

The captain approached the first youth, who squinted and trembled at the sound of footsteps. Through the pitch black, the captain saw the boy's eyes stir beneath the curtain of hair that hung limp across them.

"You may speak to me," the captain said to the boy, placing a ceramite gauntlet on a thick shoulder. Even though the captain tried to be delicate, the boy gave a painful grimace. He lessened his grip. "Your years of service were helpful to the brotherhood. The ancestors of the afterworld and the Emperor who watches them are pleased." This was laughably untrue. The sand was simply rotated to an empty vault to be shoveled once again by a fresh team and neither the Emperor nor the spirits had been summoned to behold the boys' labour. But they didn't need to know that.

"Years?" one of the boys whispered in the dark.

"Quiet," the captain snapped, "just the one I speak to may speak. My gauntlet upon your shoulder will tell you where I am." He continued. "If you wish," the captain whispered into the ear the boy before him, "you may continue in the depths below, working. But if you wish, you may take hold of the greater destiny we have chosen for you. Your old self died with your family who could not defend your life from the hunger of others." The captain stressed certain words; the very same ones he himself had heard when this speech was given to him. Even he didn't know why he did it. Through the vox network, the apothecary chuckled to himself. He'd noticed the captain's little habit.

"If you are finished with being preyed upon, exploited and you wish to rise above your dead existence and rise to heights you never knew awaited, then take my hand and stand to live amongst my comrades. To live as one of us. To live as master of this place. To perhaps join the spirits of the honoured dead by the Emperor. To live as a predator. Forever."

"To live?" the boy asked.

"Will you join us?" asked the captain.

"I…yes. As long as I can get away…"

"Yes is enough." The captain handed the boy a long white tunic, of a size the captain figured would fit the child. "Place this on. Tell me your name"

"Aetheus."

"Welcome to the chapter, Aetheus. May the Emperor find you worthy."

No one ever declined the offer in the captain's experience, even though he had heard of such things happening. Today he was not surprised. Almost.

"Why is this one lying down?" asked the captain to the apothecary through the vox when he stood over the little boy. The little boy was the last boy who wore no tunic.

"That is an unlikely. He was one of the last to stop crying on his first day and shovels sixty-three percent of the others. Yet, here he is," replied the apothecary. The captain grimaced and lifted the boy up, careful not to open any of the dried cuts the servitors had given him. "One suicide attempt I may add. Too soft, I fear the spirits abandoned him." The captain forced himself to bend in to whisper those sacred words into an ear that did not want them. When he finished the speech, the captain heard the little boy sniffle.

"Is that what this all is?" the little boy's fragile voice whined out. "Selecting your crew from other people?"

"Will you join us?" the captain asked.

"Years? All that for a crew?"

"Will you join us?" the captain asked again.

"I don't want to." The captain felt a soft sting inside. So here was his first rejection ever. No more could he boast of never driving a single candidate from the chapter. From such a soft little soul.

"My condolences, captain," the apothecary said over the vox, "I will not speak of this to the others."

"But I have to, I guess," the little boy added. The captain saw the boy wipe his eyes.

"Save your pity for the pitiful," the captain replied to the apothecary over the vox. The captain handed the little boy one of the smallest tunics he had. "Place this on. Tell me your name."

"Tyberos," the little boy replied.

"Welcome to the chapter, Tyberos. May the Emperor find you worthy."


	3. The Way of the Predator

Again and again, Tyberos fired the rifle down the range. Again and again Aetheus and the others laughed when he could not hit the little red dot. Despite this, Aetheus and Tyberos would have long, friendly discussions after training hours were up. When the master of recruits ordered them to scrub something, the two would pass the time with discussions about whatever came to mind. Speaking openly about family was violently forbidden, so Aetheus talked about their training.

"Tyber, you need to control the muzzle climb," Aetheus explained over an oily piston as he munched on a ration bar he snuck out of the dining hall.

"They're trying to brainwash us by getting us to repeat what they tell us," Tyberos heard Aetheus say while they replaced old wiring.

"You do know it takes a little bit for a bullet to hit the target. So don't shoot at where a moving target is," lectured Aetheus from atop a crate they were supposed to move. He was an intelligent boy, the son of an officer and he had the privilege of attending the tutelage centre aboard the _Voyager of the Stars. _He would have grown up into the kind of man that a bilge-dweller would assume was lazy, well-groomed, spoiled, lived off the work of others and knew nothing about life except how to get rich. Whatever the truth, Aetheus was very smart and things that didn't make sense suddenly did after Aetheus explained them.

"Enough of us have died already, Tyber," Aetheus said once when they bunked together after hours. "I don't want to see you get left behind."

* * *

"**War is an untamable beast. Though high-minded people have tried to calm it with rules and with pity, War remains ravenous. Thus, there is neither tactic nor deed that is forbidden. For that is how War must be treated if victory is to be expected. Therefore, a predator cannot have pity." **_**–**__The first Great Truth of the Way of the Predator_

* * *

The great door opened and neophyte Tyberos stepped through in the shadow of Chaplain Qalkip. Tyberos looked around and whistled in astonishment. The warriors of the 10th company had not lied to him.

It was about as large as the great hangar bay from the _Voyager of the Stars _and it smelled strongly of that salty meat smell in the neophyte's dining hall aboard the _Dakuwaqa. _Tyberos did not miss the blend of the two ships he had spent his whole life aboard in this comparison. It was a good metaphor, for here his life as a Carcharodon would truly start.

An artificial lake filled the chamber. The water was dark and deep. Even as he watched, a great living ripple cut across the surface before melting back into the surface as whatever made it dove down into the cold depths. A fat, long pier extended out across the chamber. A thick coat of brown sand covered the pier and countless deep indents showed where space marines had trod. In the middle of the pier lay an oxygen mask and a pair of fetters, which were linked to a cable that slipped down and disappeared into the water. Tyberos took a slow breath to relax his quick pulse. He was to know no fear, so why was he so nervous? Was he still the same little boy who had been shoveling sand all those years ago?

"Head to the middle," Qalkip commanded. Tyberos walked forward. Playfully, he wondered what might happen if he turned on Qalkip and shoved him into the water. What a sight the chaplain would make, thrashing around. Aetheus, Kiesn and Dorson would holler at a story like that.

'What are you thinking?' Tyberos thought to himself, 'this is no time for silly thoughts. I am ready.' Tyberos stopped in front of the fetters. 'I think.'

"You have wonders, young one?" Qalkip's deep voice asked from behind his skull helm. Tyberos flinched as a black gauntlet clasped his shoulder.

"I do not, chaplain," lied Tyberos. His voice had deepened a few years back. He didn't even notice. It still wasn't anything like Qalkip's. One favourite game the neophytes played was making humorous guesses as to what Qalkip's face looked like beneath his helmet.

"You do not fool me," Qalkip replied. "You wish to hear the rest of our story. Has the Emperor sent spirits to whisper questions into your ears afterhours?"

"He has not. More of our history? Well, there is that, yes," Tyberos answered foolishly. Emperor save him, he was supposed to become a man today and he was stuttering like a fool. "What happened afterwards? When did our noble fathers create our great chapter from the Raven Guard legion and what was it that killed so many of the Raven Guard? If the Emperor is to ever tell me one thing, it's how he let that happen."

"When you were first taken in, you said you were ready to bear the weight of the chapter, for to be one of us demands hardship as well," Qalkip said. "You have passed your first tests but have you learned your lessons young one?"

"I have chaplain."

"How can you prove it?"

"I…" Tyberos stumbled, again feeling foolish. "Well, you know, I…if you check with sergeant Jursk, I scored the highest number of hits in the beast chamber with the chainblade."

"A useless trick if you never get close enough to the foe," replied Qalkip without thinking.

"Sorry…" No! Not sorry! What a stupid thing to say! If only he wasn't so nervous! A warrior could not be sorry, for a warrior could not afford mistakes.

"A true warrior is not sorry, for no errors on the battlefield can be completely safe to make," replied Qalkip. "Why are you worthy?"

"I showed my faith before the priesthoods. I showed I know all our Imperial hymns and the invocations of the ancestors and the…"

"Important things, but too small to elevate you to the brotherhood," Qalkip was cruel in his expectations, as Tyberos figured.

"Because…" Tyberos recalled his examination in the beast chamber a week previous. "Because I made it, because I could act with my fellows as part of the hunt. Because I can hunt and I can kill."

"All men can be killers. Did the Drowning Chambers not teach you this? But not all men can be hunters." Qalkip towered over Tyberos when he continued. "And why does the predator hunt?" Great, an oral exam.

"Because it must feed, the predator is independent," Tyberos recited upwards to Qalkip's skulled helmet.

"What is the Way of the Predator?" asked Qalkip's voice from behind that skeletal face.

"The Way of the Predator is to conserve strength for the kill. To be silent and efficient, for a single mistake means starvation. To approach unseen, unexpected and to kill quick so it can feed, so the predator can feed," Tyberos recited with little trouble. "So it is with us. Silent, efficient, unexpected. Independent, we make the most of every feeding. And control, always control. No ounce of strength is wasted on meaningless rage."

"Name some of our brother chapters."

"Raven Guard, Ultramarines, Omega Marines, Red Wolves, Space Wolves, Shadow Wolves, Emperor's Wolves, Black Templars, White Templars, Red Templars, Invaders, Revilers, Dark Angels, Angels of Vengeance, the Blood Angels…"

"May the Emperor watch over them all. What do we owe to Chapter Master Nokhang?" Qalkip asked.

"We owe him our wisdom. Chapter Master Nokhang was the Raven Guard who Corax appointed to watch over our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor. He was the man chosen to first lead our chapter. His teachings guided us before the Carcharodons voyaged the abyss," Tyberos said.

"We voyage the abyss. Alone?"

"Not alone, never alone. The Emperor is with us, the spirits watch us when we call to them. And the greater Imperium lives in our shadow. We fight for the Emperor's people, so they are with us always," Tyberos didn't believe that last part, but it was what he had to say because it was what the chapter had taught him.

"And why do we voyage the abyss?"

"To repay our debt to Corax. He loved our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor. He loved them so much that he could not destroy all of them. He could not afford to destroy them all. There were too few with his blood, he needed as many to live as he could. The Imperium needed all the warriors it could have in those days when the Emperor and the spirits failed and the space marines were few. Corax could not save them all but saw the purity in some of those who were least tainted and so set them on the path we now keep. We keep his deeds from the Imperium to keep his honour amongst the Emperor's people. They must never think he ever disobeyed the Imperium. His spirit would weep and all the spirits would hear his lament and cry out in pain."

"Why was he asked to destroy our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor?"

"Our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor…they were those monster things who Corax built to rebuild his dying legion. The Imperium saw what they were and cast them out, to die. Some of them were monsters and even Corax's love could not save them."

"How do our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor, fit within our tactics?"

"They do not," this one was easy. "Sacrifices and rituals do not kill enemies and relying on their direct aid is futile. The spirits, all the spirits, not just dead Carcharodons, maintain our spiritual health. No warrior can ever win a battle only with faith."

"Repeat that final saying."

"No warrior can ever win a battle only with faith," Tyberos recited.

"Remember that. I have twice seen a young brother go to his grave when his faith broke his sense of reality and spirit," the chaplain said heavily. "And what befalls them who speak to the unreal? And what is the difference between and unreal and a spirit?"

"The unreal are the collected evils of all mortals given life in the warp. They are vile mockeries of the spirits. The unreal are pure evil that seek to enslave and dominate but the spirits are the honoured ones who live on in the afterworld. Those men who speak to the unreal are less than human and even the best among them is worthy of death. No good, no power, no wealth and no happiness has ever come from binding oneself to the unreal, for the warp only cares for itself and their gifts are illusion," Tyberos said.

"Are we monsters?"

"Only to those who are soft in mind, but the spirits and the Emperor know truly," Tyberos didn't like answering this question. "We are predators and predators kill. But the universe is a hateful place and so to defend humanity, there must be predators on the hunt far from the cities of the Emperor. Those who do not understand only see the predators."

"Are you a monster?"

This was a question Tyberos had never been taught to answer. Suddenly, he found himself without an answer that had been shouted out at the chapel to recite back to his chaplain.

"No," he said quickly. He looked down at the dark water and wondered if the spirits still looked like the humans they were. "This is…well, my destiny. It's how I can repay my Emperor, my primarch and all of you aboard the _Dakuwaqa _for all that you have taught me_._ I guess some people might say I am, one day, if I decide to live that long...if I live that long, sorry." He remembered what he first thought when he saw a Carcharodon in the light. That was before he knew about their blessed duty and the wisdom of the Emperor. Monster was what had come to mind. "Some people will be softer than me, peaceful, never have to see killing. But that is their destiny, not mine." He imagined what lay under that water. Even the scouts who'd told him about this place never mentioned that.

"Place the fetters on yourself." Tyberos obeyed. The chaplain put the mask onto Tyberos' face. "May the spirits bring you luck and do not be afraid when you see them," Qalkip whispered before the cable dragged Tyberos under the water.

* * *

"**History fast forgets the wailing of the mourning and the suffering of the innocent. What matters is power and where it lies. Think more on the fate of nations than on the deaths of the unarmed when at the hunt." **_**–**__The second Great Truth of the Way of the Predator_

* * *

Through the screen, two captains watched Tyberos float like a fetus as the machines worked on him. The final organs were going into the neophyte's body. With a little luck from the spirits, he would join the scouts. Neither captain watched the squid-like machines on Tyberos' chest. Both were eyeing the one that had opened the small hole in his skull and at the sliver of a metal arm that was reaching inside it. Both men knew of the electrical signals the arm was sending into Tyberos' brain without seeing them.

"I never sicken of seeing this," Captain Azahar admitted. "It is a great revelation to learn of the Horus Heresy in a single moment. Such a loss of innocence."

"I cannot even remember my time in there," replied Captain Leonivich. "Before you suggest it, no. That damned arm did not lobotomize me."

"Wash the blood off your memories, they will return," Azahar suggested.

"There are not enough sanitation rags and servitors in all the brotherhood for the task, I am afraid," Leonivich replied with a feral chuckle. "Unless you and the fifth company wish to volunteer to the task." Tyberos winced violently and the joke continued no further.

"He must be wondering right now why Horus did it," Azahar said. "Did I ever tell you that in my neophyte days I actually revered Horus as much as Corax? Afterwards I killed a feast of cattle in blood-penance to the Emperor for having such thoughts."

"As long as you do not revere him now, captain," replied Leonivich. "And no, you did not. No more jesting now Azahar. Here it comes."

Quietly, they watched as one of the machines lifted an antiquated space marine helmet up towards Tyberos' head. A faded Raven Guard insignia still decorated the forehead. Both captains made no noise, as though the slightest breath could distract the machine's arms as it lifted the helmet up to the mask Tyberos wore. A needle shot out from the mask and struck the helmet in a hole that had been neatly drilled into one side.

"How can we know if it is working?" asked Azahar.

"We cannot," Leonivich replied. "But I have not waited so long for the machine spirits to go impotent now."

"There are some things you cannot give orders to," replied Azahar with a slight grin. Pointed teeth shone out from between Azahar's lips. "You know, I now wish it fails."

"You will never see me lose my temper," assured Leonivich.

Through the monitor, Tyberos silently floated.

* * *

Legion XIX

**Welcome Legionnaire**

**Your Profile**

**+++CURRENT LOCATION: Isstvan V +++ **

**+++CAMPAIGN ONGOING+++**

**+++CURRENT TIME: DAY 3285201 OF THE ISSTVAN V CAMPAIGN+++ **

**Input command…**

**Command accepted…**

**Access imaging log: DROPSITE MASSACRE**

**Input encryption key: ****** **** ***** ************

**Key accepted…**

**Loading imaging data file…**

**Playing visual file…**

* * *

Running.

Fighting.

Retreating.

Space marines, more space marines than Tyberos knew had ever existed, fought under the light of an alien sky. The battle played in the eye lenses of the mask he wore from the perspective of someone who was at the battle, his eyes were the mask's eyes. There was no sound to the action, but grainy voices shouted to one another over a vox channel. Amongst the confusion, Tyberos saw the enemies the space marines fought: other space marines. So it was true. Those unbidden thoughts were true. Horus had aligned himself with the unreal and the forces of chaos.

'Emperor, no,' Tyberos thought. 'It can't be. No. How could the Emperor not have known Horus would betray him?' Worse than watching it was knowing what was going to happen and not being able to stop it. Tyberos wanted to shout to his ancestors through space in time, tell them the warnings they needed to hear.

"_Move your cohort from the ridgeline and regroup with the second wave."_

"_Second wave inbound. Regroup."_

"_All cohorts, we have our orders. Restock at the landing point." _The helmet's perspective turned about to show the distant sight of a mass of newcomers dressed in colours that Tyberos now hated. He could see them behind their barricades, their weapons loaded.

"_Come in Alpha Legion."_

"_Alpha Legion Cohort XX replying."_

"_The traitors are dug in. Our primarch has ordered us back. Stand by to receive."_

"_Confirmed. Standing by. Dig your cohorts in behind our barricades." _

"_Confirmed."_

"_This is Vashuss. Put on your scales. Our time has come. For the Emper..."_

"_Alpha Legion, repeat that?"_

"_Alpha Legion, repeat that?"_

"_Praetor! Come in! The second wave just shot at us!"_

Tyberos forced himself to watch and listen as the Raven Guard were massacred as their allies turned on them. He clenched his fists and took in every detail. He watched every space marine get shot off his feet. Hour after hour he watched and listened to those hateful sights. Years from that moment, the sight of space marines lying in excruciating carpets of dead still flickered in his mind's eye like an unforgettable nightmare. He watched a heretic of the Night Lords scythe down a Raven Guard officer.

'I want to become a Carcharodon right now!' Tyberos thought. 'So I can kill that man! So I can go back in time and end that Night Lord's worthless life!'

The view suddenly filled with the sight of a space marine champion dressed in sickly green with a black topknot. Once, Tyberos would have embraced such a man as a brother in arms. But the Sons of Horus had turned renegade thousands of years before Tyberos was born. The warrior of the Sons of Horus had a brief but brutal struggle with the helmet's wearer. It ended with the traitor standing in triumph over the recording. As the Son of Horus drew his chainsword back from the fallen Raven Guard, he took off his helmet to reveal an unassuming brown-haired head with green eyes. Smirking like a bully, the unhelmeted marine spat into the eyes of the fallen Raven Guard, briefly fogging the camera. When the saliva dripped away, the man was gone.

'Why did they have to show me that awful vision?' Tyberos thought in agony, 'to get my blood up? To show me how weak space marines can be?' Yet now he understood why Corax had to sink so low to rebuild his legion. There was no escaping the unhappy truth. Without that monstrous slaughter, Corax would not have tried to rebuild the Raven Guard. Without that monstrous slaughter there would be no Carcharodon brotherhood.

* * *

"**When vanquished, a population's pride will always drive it to insurgency against the victors. The only way to escape the mosquitoes is to drain the swamp, so it is here. Therefore, do not expect victory as a conqueror of men until you swim in an ocean of blood**_**." –**__The third Great Truth of the Way of the Predator_

* * *

_The mask was off and lost in the darkness. Tyberos floated with a bare face in the cold water. His hair drifted wildly but slowly above his head. His eyes blinked at the abyssal depths around him. He could feel, rather than see, the tube that ran into his mouth, filling his lungs with a sour tasting air. A distant ache burned at his chest. Years later, when he saw someone else in his situation, he was amazed at how painful it looked compared to how it felt. He wasn't even aware of the metal arm giving shocks to his exposed brain. There was little time to consider such things. Tyberos wanted to get out of these chains and explode to the surface. He wanted to go around and tell Aetheus and Malor and Fywinn of his revelation. He wanted to go to captain Leonivich and beg for a weapon so he could go out and find some chaos marines to kill. His purpose was more clear than ever. Such awful monsters like the ones at Isstvan were loose on humanity. Humanity needed a brotherhood of even bigger monsters to wipe the Traitor Legions off the galaxy._

Traitor Legions. Tyberos had never heard the term or seen it written, yet it lay within his vocabulary like an old cliche. What had they done to him? Plasma weapons unlike anything aboard his old home ship were a simple thing, but imparting knowledge without learning was quite another.

What was his old ship called? He had not spoken its name in so long its name was growing foggy. The _Traveler in the Suns_, yes, he remembered_. _Such a simple name. That's all it was, a simple name. His lovely, soft, weak mother would be so proud of him for the destiny he had been shown.

'The galaxy needs me,' Tyberos thought. Never before had he been as much of a Carcharodon as he was right now. A long line of enemies were out before him and he, the predator, was to hunt them down and murder them and whatever armies they propped up in his way.

'That frightening replay I just saw truly got me angry,' Tyberos observed. He was surprised at how upset he was. This didn't feel like him. In the darkness beside his head, the arm was still sending electricity into his brain, modifying his soul into something the Carcharodons could use. 'I will serve my Emperor and make the spirits happy.'

His thoughts grew messy when he felt a massive form bump into his body. His head tried to snap around, but he felt it was locked in a pair of metal pincers. He assumed that great creatures swam with him. Perhaps sharks. It would be a fitting novelty.

"The final organs are within you now, Tyberos, and the surgical wounds are closed," said a dry voice that echoed from the blackness. Tyberos could impossibly make out shapes in the dark. Here a gliding fin and there, a light that danced through the water before disappearing. He noticed that the darkness was suddenly lit up, no longer monotonous void, but a panorama of stars. Tyberos recognized it all as a map of the galaxy. He would have laughed as stars floated through his hair, between his fingers and into his skin. Nebulae fluttered between his toes. He tried to grab one, but his fingers slipped through it. He felt an excited happiness build up in him. It was such a sight, like nothing he had ever seen. He wished he could have his dead, weak family here so he could lead them on a Carcharodon war dance through the leaping comets.

"The galaxy is vast, we are a small thing in it, but we are the faithful, no matter how few," the voice spoke. "We fight for humanity." Tyberos felt like he had drank a cup of caffeine. He did not feel afraid as another object bumped him. He felt the thrill of danger when an arm of the galaxy parted and a curious shark pushed through. It glided over him and came around again. Tyberos did not keep watching it, for another, bigger shark had come into view. Another, and another still swam by him. A storm of grey bodies was now circling Tyberos. The galaxy faded away beneath the blizzard of sharks.

'All the better that we are so few,' thought Tyberos in an ecstatic bravado, 'all the more people for me to kill. For the Emperor.' How laughably insignificant his stupid, useless life as a pirate's son was compared to this. If he had his mother here before him he would kill her out of malice for not letting him be born directly into the chapter. 'What a strange thought to have, where did it come from?' Tyberos thought. The metal arm sent more shocks into his brain.

"Kill and eat that fish," demanded the voice.

Tyberos saw a fat red snapper of some kind glide into view. He took a passing notice of its mechanical servitor eyes. Tyberos smiled. His first kill as a Carcharodon. Tyberos spat out the life-giving tube and pushed himself forward. Were the arm still in his head, he might have hurt himself, but he felt nothing. With this first motion, the shackles detached themselves and he was free.

In a burst of speed, the fish took off through the depths, passing between the circling sharks. Tyberos kicked and swept his arms on after it, somehow spotting it, despite in the darkness. It appeared to deliberately slow down, just as Tyberos came up on it. The boy's lungs burned but he would not let his first kill be a failure, no matter how ridiculous the target.

"AWWW," Tyberos screamed in triumph, loosing his mouthful of air. A salty taste filled his mouth. Tyberos' teeth sunk into the soft flesh of the fish. He ripped and tasted blood. Around him, sharks were pushing their snouts in to tear the meat from his hands. A drunken, reckless frenzy kept him attacking. He knew he was drowning but he only cared about killing. What was death anyway, but a journey to meet the spirits?

Tyberos smiled as he swallowed a mouthful of fish meat. It had no taste. He could see the sharks tearing the unlucky animal into pieces now. Bits of bone and servitor implants were falling like snow into the blackness below.

Tyberos' chest and ears were burning with a want for oxygen and the pressure while his legs were kicking frantically now. Water ran up into his nose.

Armoured gauntlets seized him. He saw two brothers in full armour with a specialized motor attached to the power plant. He felt himself rising, up and up.

When the battle brother lifted him up above the water, he breathed in triumph.

"Anything else?" Tyberos asked, "more than a fish? A Traitor Legion member, by any luck?"

"Another day, brother Tyberos," said the marine holding him. It was Qalkip.


	4. Growing Fangs

"**Care not for the messes you make afar from the Imperium. For the outer darkness is vast and no calamity cannot be escaped in its breadth. Therefore, if madness is needed, madness you shall make. If famine is needed, then let hunger reign. The worlds of outsiders are yours to destroy." **_**–**__The fourth Great Truth of the Way of the Predator_

* * *

Battle was coming soon. News had spread through the _Dakuwaqa _fast. Brothers all across the war shoal prepared for war in their own way.

Sergeant Teketik ducked and weaved from sergeant Balor's axe to roars of approval from the massed brothers. Both sergeants were bare the waist and fought with edgeless weapons. Balor's skin was losing its colour, turning gently towards the old grey that marked the purest of the brotherhood from amongst its savage ranks. Teketik, like many others his age, was so thickly dressed in tattoos that the colour of his skin was hard to tell. His face was a pair of open jaws and his rippling muscles were curling glyphs and predatory shadows. Tyberos thought humanity ended with pink and brown. But the diverse tones of human skin he had seen in the war shoal had shown him how ignorant he was of even basic truths on mankind.

Tyberos stepped away from the edge of the Beast Chamber the sparring sergeants were using. He a bit of mature pride when he noticed the young scouts and newly inducted battle brothers in the crowd that watched the duel. Young faces, unscarred faces, faces without a dot of the old grey. Tyberos should be with his companions from the 10th. But practice was more important. The spirits would bless him for his concentration.

Tyberos stood with his breath calm as he flexed his big arms. It had been easy to get used to his new body. It had been as easy as forgetting about a scar one of the servitors had given him during the Abyssal Labour. Tyberos recited the prayer of activation to show he was ready. No fire drills today, they were too frustrating. His knife-work needed practice.

"Squid!" Tyberos commanded. He felt daring. It was prohibited to activate the shock function within four days of combat action, Tyberos decided there was no point to practicing here without some risk. "Shock function," he said, just loud enough so the older space marines would not hear.

From the iron walls of the long chamber shot whipping metal tentacles, each tipped with a sparking head. Tyberos' combat knife sliced up and knocked a tentacle away before it could strike him. The tentacle shot back into the wall. In a stomp of his heavy foot, Tyberos pinned a second tentacle down and crouched by it, in time to avoid a third tentacle. Tyberos raised his knife to cut.

"Jaguar!" It was Milan. The chuckling scout cart-wheeled in beside Tyberos, a thick combat knife in hand. The two young space marines stood back to back as more tentacles shot from the walls while grasping metal maws came from the walls to strike at their feet. From the corner of his eye, Tyberos could see more scouts hurrying to join.

"Rat!" That was Kiesn's favourite. He seemed to enjoy easy victories more than hard ones. Each new scout shouted out another wave of obstacles.

"Hawk!"

"Snake!"

"I would have preferred fewer reinforcements," Tyberos said when Aetheus joined him. The two battered away a metal bear. Tyberos saw a tentacle heading for Aetheus' back and knocked it away.

"It looked like so much fun," Aetheus replied. "What has not been called? And why is the shock function on?"

"Ask the Emperor," said Kiesn, "this is hard."

"Not hard enough," Tyberos sneered as he held a metal arm steady an beat off more of the Beast Chamber's attacks with his knife. "Crocodile!" He grinned when Kiesn was jerked off his feet by a low-lying pair of metal jaws.

Around him, other scouts were dropping to the stunning shocks the teeth and claws delivered. The apothecary would be annoyed for sure.

"Watch out!"

"There's a claw!"

"Tyber!" Aetheus warned.

"I see it!" Tyberos threw a metal hand into the metal tentacle about to shock him. There were only three scouts left out of twenty. Milan looked like he was about to be overcome.

"Too much?" Aetheus asked. He could not get the next word out. A metal claw shocked him from behind. Tyberos snatched up someone else's knife and made sure he kept turning and moving to negate his opponents' numbers. Two blades now.

"Deactivate!" roared captain Azahar. Tyberos stood alone in the middle of a circle of paralyzed scouts. As the metal horrors of the Beast Chamber fell back into the doors in the iron wall, the burly captain crossed his arms. Tyberos could see the chamber had emptied.

"Captain," Tyberos kneeled down. Though he had the body of a scout, he was still a little boy in many ways.

"If I was a spirit I would curse you to die, stripling," Azahar's huge fist clenched. "Scout. Tell me the third rule of the Beast Chamber."

"Do not practice with the shock function on within four days of combat," Tyberos admitted. He noticed with dismay how his whole squad lay among the paralyzed. "I apologize, captain." He wished now he could have let his guard down and get a debilitating jolt so he would not have to face Azahar alone.

"So why was it on?"

"I am without excuse." A painful blow struck Tyberos' face to one side.

"Make penance and be sure you are ready for tomorrow's drop. If you can handle it. Pray your squad is revived in time or I am sending you to battle on your own." Azahar snarled as his eyes turned downward. Tyberos acknowledged it. "What? Do you want the spirits to tell you what to do? Stand up and get out." Tyberos nodded and scampered off. Penance prayers? Tyberos would try to find a way to keep from having to do them, feeling the spirits didn't need to hear him apologize for this little mess. If he had to go alone, he would go alone.

All the better to practice his thrusts on live targets.

* * *

Tyberos walked with his squad through the hangar in the shadow of the thousands of bone fetishes that hung from the ceiling like white moss. The oldest, most frail of them dated back to the time of Nokhang the first Carcharodon, himself. Each one represented a battle. Grinning skulls, shark teeth, used bolter shells and shrunken heads hung from them. Tyberos didn't notice them anymore. He had worked in here enough, helping the techmarines.

Around them, full Carcharodon brothers were embarking into one of the looming, tall shapes in the dark: drop pods, a score of them, in powerful rows like the pillars of a temple. Black eyes stared from their white faces set into their grey helmets. The whole of a suit of Carcharodon power armour was grey beneath the neck, giving to a deep, dark grey at the shoulder. Their power armour were all antiquated patterns. Most of them had armoured studs covering a whole shoulder or the top of a helmet. Others still wore grill-like faceplates with armour that showed off its rivets. It was said by those old grey brothers who had fought in the Imperium that most brother chapters did not boast so many working examples of the armour that the Carcharodons outfitted their companies with. The chapter's emblem, a curling white shark, stared from every brother. The full brothers wore ritual glyphs to illustrate the type of man each suit held. Tyberos was still learning all the meanings, but he could pick out the most common ones when he saw them.

"Hail chaplain," spoke scout sergeant Jilab from the front of the squad. Qalkip nodded his head in acknowledgment and continued oiling his chainaxe.

The scouts walked by a line of servitors that carried boxes of shells towards a line of large, ugly shadows that waited alongside the drop pods. Through the breaks in the pods, Tyberos made out jagged meat hooks hanging from the side of armour plate. They were the chapter's tanks. The meat hooks were sometimes used to carry prisoners back to the fleet.

"Hail captain," Jilab saluted a normal-looking battle brother with slightly more tattoos on his armour. One look at the bones hanging from the man's bolter and Tyberos recognized captain Leonivich the Pale Maw, the most senior Carcharodon in the whole of war shoal Pale Maw.

They walked past an assault squad that were practicing their slashes with chainswords whirring in unison and came before the grey thunderhawk they were going down in.

Tyberos had looked forward to this, his first combat action. Its trivial nature did not make it feel less momentous to him. He squeezed the handle of his trusted combat knife and thought proudly of how he would use it. He did not handle his flamer so roughly. It was a short-tempered machine that would not thank him if he did. The squad hurried aboard and the thunderhawk closed its maw.

The planet outside had no name, so the Carcharodons referred to it as "Prey World 3X156," but the brothers called it "Chitin Badlands." It lay in the east of the Isenor sector, beyond Imperial space. The xenos of Chitin Badlands were an unclassified semi-humanoid race of some sentience. Command referred to them as the bow scorpions. Tyberos' rough impression of them was a large insect with an upright torso section and grasping claws. Command reported their society was primitive, though their first cities were rising out of their hot world. In the name of supremacy, the bow scorpions were to die. Yesterday, five Carcharodon warships had bombed all bow scorpion settlements out of existence. Survivors were now to be killed. This feeding would not be glorious, but neither was scrubbing filtration systems, yet they both had to be done.

The thunderhawk shook. Kiesn whispered something and Aetheus hushed him. Outside, the noise of the engines picked up. A heavy shudder, and they had lifted off, speeding to Tyberos' first battle.

In the year between his initiation into the 10th company and now, Tyberos had sobered to reality and abandoned his daydreams of hunting down and killing the villains of the Horus Heresy that still lived. His daily training schedule left him no time to think. Now improving his appalling marksmanship rating was more important than shooting a chaos lord to death. No more boyish fantasies, he was a grown man now. He had work to do.

"One minute to planetfall!" shouted scout sergeant Jilab from the front of the thunderhawk. "Secure masks!" Tyberos did a last minute check of his rebreather mask. "Vox check!"

"Kiesn, reporting," intoned the short scout beside Jilab.

"Aobwen, reporting," said the scout behind him, clutching his bolter.

"Milan, reporting."

"Assar, reporting."

"Aetheus, reporting." Tyberos hadn't stood close to his oldest companion in the chapter on purpose. Anyone else in Jilab's squad would have been fine, Tyberos knew them all from training. But as Tyberos spoke his name into the squad's vox channel, he wondered if Jilab was taking notice. Tyberos was not afraid and keeping close to familiar company. But that didn't mean Jilab wouldn't suspect something.

The thunderhawk's mouth opened. Light glaring from the sand outside flooded in. The scouts rushed forth into the silent emptiness beyond.

Within moments, the thunderhawk was rising up into the barren tan sky. Squad Jilab hugged down into the rocky desert landscape, forming a circle, weapons ready just as they had practiced together.

"Milan, auspex?" Jilab's voice was as dry as the baking sand and it was made even drier by the vox. Everything would be said over the vox from here until extraction. Tyberos trained his flamer on the tall rocks around them. This garden of craggy outcroppings and rock mounds made it impossible to see more than a few meters. Yet this was the best drop zone they could find that was close enough to the bombed-out xenos city. They would have to squeeze and crawl their way to it.

"Open water," replied Milan, rolling his bolter back up. So there were no life forms for at least three kilometers? Fine. Perhaps the life signs they had been sent to investigate were false positives, ghosts of the dying city. How could a primitive xenos culture survive the orbital bombing they had just received?

It was a slow, careful trek to the site of the murdered city. Footsteps were careful and no corner was turned recklessly. Jilab's sniper rifle never lowered. Everyone except Tyberos formed fire teams, their bolters raised. Tyberos kept by Jilab, his flamer unlit. Their journey took so long, Tyberos had some time to let his thoughts wander.

'45 percent below average marksmanship,' Tyberos thought as he perched beside Jilab while everyone else moved out, like birds on wing, while Tyberos remained in the nest.

The bow scorpion city was now a messy pattern of overlapping craters that lay in the center of a clearing in the maze of baby canyons. Searching the desolation, Tyberos tried to find some sign of buildings amongst the ruin. These creatures made their buildings from crude masonry quarried from the stone around them. The bombing had obviously blasted the rocks back to their sources. Tyberos saw no shape of a city in the yawning space before him. A younger, less disciplined version of Tyberos would have groaned out loud and remarked on their wasted time. Tyberos the scout said nothing and looked to Jilab for orders. Milan spoke first.

"Hit, hit," Milan reported. "Below us, tunnels, a spiderweb of them. Contacts one hundred plus."

"Nearest tunnel?" Jilab asked.

"We're right on one," Milan paused. "Something about the minerals is confusing the reading. It keeps blinking in and out. It would explain why the fleet didn't read it."

"Confirmed," Jilab said. "Milan, report back for orders."

Moments later they were carrying out their orders. A breaching charge broke a wound open in the ground. At that signal, Tyberos slid through the cloud of dust the charge had created and slammed the ignition on his flamer. A jet of flame shot from the barrel into the little hole. Alien shrieks replied, just as Milan's reading had promised him.

"Scattering," Milan reported. So the bow scorpions were fleeing? Civilians then. Or cowards.

"Squad, in. Combat blades. Assar, take point. Tyberos, support."

Jumping after Assar, Tyberos landed among a carpet of crisped bow scorpions. His first kills as a true Carcharodon. He did not feel the significance of the moment amongst the hurry.

The Carcharodons pursued the fleeing aliens down both sides of the tunnels, their blades punching through chitin to release floods of amber blood. Tyberos stood, flamer raised. His job was to cover his squad mate's escape if they had to withdraw.

The next few hours were an eternity of cramped tunnels, alien screams and voxed orders. Tyberos never let his flamer lower. A many times he was ordered to clear out a section of tunnel. Tyberos lost count of the number of shots his flamer took. A few times, a xenos warrior would appear to shoot an arrow or fling a spear at them. Bolter rounds finished them.

"Squad, clear the chamber ahead. Tyberos, support."

"Hostiles in the tunnel. Bolters. Tyberos, support our rear."

"Combat blades, clear the connecting tunnel. Tyberos, support."

* * *

"**In war, everyone is a combatant. Therefore, treat everyone in a conflict thusly." –**The fifth and final Great Truth of the Way of the Predator

* * *

"The bombs can't get everything," Aetheus lamented as the scouts sat under the night sky. The ugliness of the day was past them, their mission was successful, the xenos were dead and a thunderhawk would extract them once one was available. Lying under the protection of a miniature canyon wall, the scouts were gorging on bow scorpion flesh, which had proved to be edible.

"How is that a shame?" Aobwen asked, shearing away a chitin shell.

"Even with the ships of our war shoal, we still have to set foot on this place. These xenos throwbacks should not take us any time. We are the Imperium, they are less than nothing. And we have to confront them hand-to-hand," Aetheus mumbled. "Not how I imagined my first combat action."

"The spirits will send us to something better," promised Kiesn. Assar and Milan nodded.

"I do not believe in the spirits," Aetheus muttered under his breath.

"It is better than my first time in the chapter colours," Jilab said, "an extermination action against sentient machines that did not fight back. I did not kill any warriors. But what of today? How many warrior bow scorpions did you slay Aetheus?"

"Four hundred," Aetheus replied.

"Warrior bow scorpions, I said."

"Thirteen," the younger scout corrected. The circle replied with their own tallies, one by one. The number was never lower than five. All fell quiet when it came to Tyberos.

"I was supporting you," Tyberos admitted. "I killed no warriors." A few of the others made weak insults.

"It was his role, not his courage," Aetheus defended. "In the way we deployed, you know he needed to cover our rear. And killing a bow scorpion barbarian is no accomplishment."

"Perhaps," Jilab confessed.


	5. Pale Years

Whoever they were, they were not Imperial and that was all that mattered. This moon mining base would be cleared and pillaged. The Carcharodons had cleared the outer hallways of defenders.

"Breach and clear," Jilab's voice came over the vox channel. With Kiesn and Milan behind them, Tyberos crouched by the sliding door and nodded to Aetheus. Tyberos ducked away then, cradling his flamer. His ears briefly rang when the burst-charges took the iron door off its hinges. Aetheus ducked away to give Tyberos his room. He pressed the nozzle of his flamer inside and filled the storage chamber with inferno. Dancing specters of men ablaze raced away from his fiery assault, screaming curses in their harsh language.

In a moment, Tyberos saw one of the human enemies rise up from behind a pile of empty ore bins. The man still wore his miner's garb, but his hands carried a snub-nosed lightning gun. Tyberos could see his face tight and focused on the kill he would soon make, unless Tyberos acted.

Rolling into the room, Tyberos made way for Aetheus. The miner's head exploded before he could shoot. Aetheus swept inside while bolter rounds from the rest of his squad ended the suffering of the burning defenders. Aetheus took cover behind a bin as more men with lightning-guns appeared from their hiding places.

Tyberos rammed his knife into a miner's throat, punching his gut with his other hand. He saw Aetheus toss his knife towards him and took it, letting his flamer hang loose beside him. He then pointed his empty bolter at a human who had jumped out from behind a heap of crates to threaten Tyberos with his pistol. The man cried out and ducked back, buying time. Tyberos launched forward and stabbed the man in the throat with one knife while slashing off the man's pistol hand. Turning from his falling kill, Tyberos tossed Aetheus back his knife as the other scout joined him behind the crates.

"They are coming, brother," Aetheus warned over his squad's bolters.

"I can hear them," assured Tyberos. They worked together to knock the crates down. Tyberos was letting fly with his flamer before the pile all hit the ground. Screaming men who thought they could corner the two scouts ran back in terror from the blaze that engulfed them. Some men ran into ore bins or fell to the moon-rock floor.

Aetheus finished off four in as many shots. The last kill would have been his, but bolt from a shooter from the doorway knocked the last defender to the floor.

"Mine," Milan smirked, despite that nasty burn on his cheek that a lightning-gun gave him earlier. He stepped calmly inside, giving his smoking bolter a pat. Aetheus and Tyberos stepped back to rejoin their squad.

"Forward, spread. Assar on point. Milian, vox. Tyberos, you know the rest," Jilab commanded.

"Yes sergeant," Tyberos replied.

"Tyberos, support," muttered Aetheus. "Just fifteen more chambers to go."

* * *

Slashing down orks was more challenging than slashing down humans. Humans could be held back but orks came forward with tremendous momentum. It was like standing in front of a huge ocean wave and letting it crash against you. It had been over two years since they fed upon that rich moon and its non-Imperial defenders. Those two years had been bloody ones and Aetheus could now prove it. The ork's broadsword had not cut through his chestpiece. Still, the apothecary wanted to follow up with Aetheus, just in case.

Being carefully silent, Aetheus stepped across the sand of the pier over the Astral Abyss: the name for the small lake in the _Dakuwaqa's _lower decks. Aetheus hadn't come here in years, not since his initiation into the 10th Company. It looked smaller now and the footprints in the sand that had seemed so large were a little larger than his own feet. Or perhaps it was his distorted recollection. He crept past a full battle brother who sat in a grey robe in meditation over the water and came up upon the cluster of his fellows near the middle of the pier.

Assar, Tyberos and Kiesn were there in full battle dress, meditating in a triangular position that suggested an empty space for a fourth person. Aetheus quickly deduced that they were leaving it open for Milan's spirit. Six years later and the group still seemed incomplete without him. The five of them had always been the four bolters and one support weapon of Jilab's squad that the rest of 10th Company could count on. Well, it hadn't been Jilab's squad for three months now. Aetheus was still getting used to Jilab's promotion. He'd have bigger things to get used to soon.

"May I speak?" Aetheus asked gingerly after he grew tired of waiting.

"Aetheus?" Kiesn opened his tawny eyes. "You are usually in the library."

"Do not break the circle, brother," warned Assar in a whisper. Kiesn nodded and made the proper gestures to detach his spirit from the others. Aetheus did his best not to look strangely at his younger battle brother's superstitious motions.

"Can we not discuss these things outside?" Kiesn asked, standing up and taking some steps from his meditating brothers.

"There may not be much time to meditate," Aetheus warned, "I am sure you have heard…"

"I do not have time for this," Kiesn hissed angrily. Aetheus could hear the Carcharodon's violent gene seed in his brother's voice. There were rumors that full brothers had shorter tempers than normal men and stories of a flesh-eating phage or a trance-inducing defect brought on by the gene seed burned brightly in the Company quarters, but no facts ever reached the lowly scouts.

"You already know about the coming raid?" Aetheus asked, "Captain Leonivich announced it at first bell. An ork vessel."

"More damned orks?" Kiesn clenched his fists in annoyance. "Leonivich wants to send us against them until we all die." He looked at Milan's empty place. "Hear that Milan? Orks again. Leonivich did not finish with you."

"What happened to Milan was not the captain's doing. You should know this, brother Kiesn," Aetheus calmly said. "But unless I have mistaken something, I believe this will be more than another brawl with the greenskins." Kiesn squinted uncertainly. "Think Kiesn. I saw fifty servitors head for the forge. Our advancement into true Carcharodons will be hastened."

"What?" Kiesn blinked, "it's not for another half-year. How do you know?"

"It is procedure, brother. I consulted the archives and asked Qalkip."

"Qalkip told you we were being advanced from scouts sooner?"

"We have already earned our place and the chapter will need us," Aetheus said. "Brothers, we will never fight outside of power armour ever again."

"Unless one of us earns terminator armour," Tyberos suggested. "That or placed in a dreadnought." He had left the circle and had snuck up behind Aetheus.

"I would not be pleased to fight alongside you if you were armed with a cyclone launcher," Kiesn smirked. "Brother Diedrick assures me a krak missile can punch through power armour." He looked back at where he imagined Milan's ghost sat. "Pardon me, I must commune again with our brother." Kiesn left the two.

"I am afraid that reputation will haunt me forever," Tyberos sighed, "when I am chapter master, brothers will say what a fool I was with the bolter. I suppose a chapter master with a flamer and a combat knife must not be an unknown thing amongst our brother chapters."

"Tyberos the Pale Maw, Herald of the Inferno," mused Aetheus.

"And what would you be? Aetheus the Black Fin, Herald of the Archivist?" asked Tyberos.

"Emperor forbid I ever join the Black Fin war shoal," Aetheus said.

"Emperor forbid, you ever become chapter master."

"Pardon me, brother?"

"Admit it Aetheus, you spend too much time in the library."

"Is it not right to learn about the Imperium?"

"It is more right to train as I do."

"I think you spend too much time in the beast chamber, not enough time on the firing range."

"You were the one who helped me pass marksmanship. And I shall tell you that the beast chamber teaches you how deadly the chainblade can be," Tyberos reminded his brother. He suddenly went somber. "Hm, so promotion? It seems our fireteam will be broken. We may be posted to different companies."

"I at least doubt you will keep the flamer," Aetheus remarked. "But I shall keep my bolter. I suspect Leonivich wants me in Angelo's squad at the end." Tyberos' eyes fell a little. Aetheus felt sorry for his brother. Angelo was the oldest, most resourceful sergeant in all of 2nd Company. Some said being assigned to his squad was a shortcut to making it to 1st Company. Angelo himself was Leonivich's appointed successor.

"I will be happy with whatever I am given," Tyberos said. "The spirits will send Leonivich the wisdom he needs to make the proper choice."

* * *

Sitting on his command throne on the bridge of the _Dakuwaqa _reminded him of his dual roles as both company captain and as the Lord Pale Maw of the war shoal. Below, his brother and their servitors ringed him. Up here, the human crew laboured at their terminals. Leonivich the Pale Maw stared with morbid fascination at the Raven Guard helmet in his hand. Those studs, just like the studs on his shoulders. Just paint it grey and white and it would be true Carcharodon.

"The announcement of the raid was made," assured sergeant Angelo. Leonivich looked up from his command throne.

"Dismissed," Leonivich said without emotion. He was more interested in the data screen that perched upon the swiveling arm in front of him. He studied the sound waves they showed. No doubt: this was a readout of a Carcharodon ship's messaging frequency and it was the same one they detected last month. This was no coincidence. Another war shoal had to be nearby.

"Communications director!" Leonivich shouted to the front of the bridge. A robed human lifted his head from his terminal. "Triangulate the coordinates of this signal and contact them!"

* * *

The announcement of the change in the schedule would have shocked him otherwise, especially since it came two days before the event itself. Tyberos spent the whole of a day meditating, asking the Emperor and the spirits for luck in his new role.

The whole of war shoal Pale Maw were shipped to the _Dakuwaqa's _ornate ceremonial hall. Three hundred brothers in full battle armour and weaponry stood in a double column, opening a path to the three captains. Behind them were an unmoving statuary of empty suits of power armour. They were naked of the white tattoos that all the other brothers wore on their armour. Only the curling white shark device on their shoulders and the white faceplates broke the monotonous grey of the armour.

The brothers lifted their weapons in salute as Qalkip led the scouts to the waiting captains. Azahar and Delroc stood still, their helmets on. Leonivich stepped forward and removed his helm to reveal his grey skin and receding white hair. His pointed teeth flashed as he spoke and his black eyes regarded the scouts individually.

Thinking back on it, Tyberos would remember little of the ceremony. He remembered none of Leonivich's proud speech or the prayer the hall recited in unison. However, he would recall how a sergeant would be summoned from the crowd and how one of the captains would tell the sergeant which scouts had been added to his squad.

"Sergeant Balor!" Leonivich called. The ranks parted to allow a stocky warrior in Heresy pattern armour and a belt hung heavy with rattling bones to march up to the captain. He knelt as all the other sergeants had done. "Sergeant Balor, 8th company. From among these initiates I give your squad brothers Tyberos, Aetheus, Kiesn, Assar and Aobwen."

"Thank you captain," the deep voice that growled from behind Balor's faceplate said. "Welcome."

"With what shall they fight, sergeant?" Leonivich asked.

"Bolter and bayonet," Balor said. "But I know of Tyberos' achievements in the Beast Chamber." At last, Tyberos might have moved beyond his unsavory reputation. Afterwards, he only remembered approaching a fierce suit of heresy pattern armour, which was only one of seven such suits available.

"I heard praises of you from your sergeant," Balor whispered. "Your skills with the combat knife are the best he saw."

"I must be humble," Tyberos replied, "my bolter skills…"

"Do not concern me," Balor interrupted. "You have skill enough for what I will ask of you. The bolt pistol and two chainswords is what you will fight with. You shall be my battering ram."

That day, Tyberos wore power armour.

* * *

The chapel rung with the voices of praying men.

A simple gleaming bolter shone in Captain Leonivich's gauntlets. He took a moment to admire the fine work he had done. The chain bayonet's motor was freshly replaced. The bolter was freshly oiled. The sigils of death were done in a new coat of white. A simple, honest weapon with a strong machine spirit that was always hungry. Leonivich the Pale Maw had refused to give his prized bolter a name. A weapon was a weapon and a name was a useless burden.

Looking up at the shrine, he held his bolter above his head and bowed his gaze from the jaws that formed the apex of the arrangements of bone that made up the shrine's form. A casual glance by a layman would give the impression of an open pair of shark jaws surrounded by flowers of bones, ringed by an arch of ribs underneath a sun made of human skulls, all hanging from the chapel walls. But Leonivich saw how every bone was arranged in relation to the others, the species of each bone and the age of each skull. The shrine was esoterically a mosaic about the inevitability of death, etched in skeletons.

"Para bellum," Leonivich intoned, concluding the private ceremony. He looked at the bolter shell with his name written on it at the base of the shrine. If the shell was still there when the battle was done, the 2nd company would need to find a new captain.

"Para bellum," echoed Qalkip. Leonivich nodded to the chaplain and noticed Azahar and two sergeants were with him. Leonivich stood aside to let them use the shrine. Azahar stood forward and lifted his two chain axes above his head, while his sergeants followed his example with their bolt pistols. Qalkip did not join them.

"You missed my prayer to the spirits at fifth bell," Qalkip said from behind his helmet. Leonivich said nothing and placed his helmet back on. "Were you greatly busied?"

"Chaplain, I mean no offense," Leonivich lifted off his cape and handed it to his attending servitor. He never wore it in battle the way captains in other chapters sometimes did, it got in the way and it made him a target.

"Tell the spirits, not me," Qalkip scolded. "With rumors of a brother war shoal near, we cannot afford ill luck."

"War shoal Red Wake. Some of our entire chapter may be with us in this very sector. The communications director thinks the signal we picked up was a false positive but it would be a strange coincidence." Leonivich took off his shark tooth necklace and unwrapped the sash from around his waist.

"You are as negligent in matters of the spirit as the day we found you," Qalkip said.

"Pray for me then," Leonivich handed the servitor his badge, which depicted a death's-hand rune clutching a glyph of heresy. Now Leonivich's armour would let him blend in with his troops. "Chaplain, I was with the council at fifth bell. I believe we are on the border of an orkish migration." Qalkip was refreshingly silent. "Would it not account for all the greenskins we have fed upon for the last year?" He could see sergeant Teketik coming his way. "Do not spread this."

"Understood," Qalkip said, quickly dropping the subject as Teketik came up to them.

"Para bellum," Azahar placed his helmet on. His visor's skull tattoo turned to face Teketik.

"Again captain with the axes. My company fears this is a bad omen, to go to war armed as Angron was," Teketik said.

"Do you think his luck will shake off on you?" asked Balor, one of the sergeants beside Azahar. "I doubt the sky will open up and vomit Angron at us just to spite us for Azahar's recklessness."

"Watch the words you use," warned Qalkip.

"Aye, chaplain."

"Teketik, if you were a lesser rank I would ignore you," Azahar replied, twirling his chainaxes, "but since you are not…"

"Humbly, I only want to pass along the consensus of some of the other squads," interrupted Teketik with a bow, "two chain axes could bring us evil. The Emperor and the spirits would not want to watch you if you carry those. You luck would be bad."

"But since you are not," Azahar tried once again, "since you are not sergeant, how would you like to test my luck for yourself?" In a flash, Azahar beat Teketik's helmet with the blunt side of one of his axes. The sergeant staggered back.

"No more," Leonivich asked calmly. Azahar chuckled as Teketik walked away.

"Your penance shall be the lives you consume," Qalkip said. Azahar ignored him.

"Are you prepared to brief me? I am tired of guessing," asked Azahar as the two sergeants left the shrine and the bolter shells they lay beneath it.

"Another ship. Orkish as you know. A simple boarding will be required. I doubt you will have time to…" Leonivich cleared his throat, "bring us bad luck. The spirits send that nothing will go awry."

"What of the rumored war shoal. Is it Red Wake or Black Fin?" asked Azahar.

"Red Wake. The council tried again to contact them at fifth bell. Like I told the chaplain, they think the signal we got was a ghost," Leonivich said. "No success. Perhaps they are not out there at all."

"I believe they are there. The coming together of war shoals is not an accidental thing. I can feel the spirits have a hand in this," Qalkip said. "Perhaps they know about your search. Perhaps you want their help." It took Leonivich a moment to realize Qalkip was staring at him beneath his mask.

"My search?" How did Qalkip know? That old man had to be a psyker. "They could not know about that, I have not told them," Leonivich protested.

"If we meet, this will be the first time another fleet sees our Raven Guard recording," Azahar pointed out. "It might not be a fine thing to bring up that subject with Red Wake, let alone Black Fin."

"I pray to the spirits that the Emperor never again asks that we fight alongside Black Fin," Qalkip stated, bowing to the front of the chapel. "But if we do meet, what will you tell them?"

"The truth. I cannot speak full to Red Wake and lie to Black Fin," Leonivich sighed. He did not want to speak of this openly. A question of his judgment could do more than spread rumors. He did not want his own men thinking he was a foolish old man. "They would agree with me if I showed them the recording. If there are veterans of the Dropsite Massacre in this sector, they must be punished. Nokhang himself would agree."

"I still do not know why we do not tell the others," Azahar stated.

"I do not want it to become common knowledge that heretics may be around in case we are spied upon," Leonivich pointed at Azahar. "You told Qalkip?"

"He did, captain," Qalkip said. "An officer cannot clutch personal vendettas close to his chest if there is a greater duty to do elsewhere. The duty Corax gave us through Chapter Master Nokhang. Especially not if it cuts into your prayers."

"I was trying to contact the other war shoal, chaplain," Leonivich replied. "I will pray with you after we kill the orks." Azahar gave his chainaxes a twirl.

"If the spirits do not let us die, of course."

* * *

Greenbeard normally enjoyed fights aboard his beloved kroozer. But this fight was wrong, all wrong. His boyz were trying their best, but they kept falling back from the invaders. Worse still, the mighty boss wasn't even getting any fighting done himself.

"Oi!" Greenbeard bellowed as he stormed down the dim hallway of the _Rampaga_ "you's is going to come with me!" He didn't even look behind himself to see if the lump of boyz he had passed obeyed. Sparks fell from the ceiling, the lights flickered and the ship listed to one side.

"Boss!" cried the voice of Gobsmik from the speak-box on his ear, "they's reached the engine!" Greenbeard stopped a moment to read the big arrow-shaped sign at the end of the hallway. It said "to the engine." Ha! Good enough.

"Follow this thing here and we'll have all the chopping you can handle!" Greenbeard roared at the crowd behind him. "Now a-ready?" They reached the long corridor. Squinting his beady eyes, Greenbeard saw the metal doors that lead to the first part of the big engine room. Greenbeard himself was unsure what lay beyond, since he was more interested in the armoury. Whatever. He'd get to see it now.

"WAAAAAGH!" he and his boyz bellowed, charging like an ocean wave towards the door. Bullets bounced and chipped off the door as the boyz tried to shoot it open. Squeezing a mushroom from his fake beard with one hand, Greenbeard drew his huge slugga with his other. Now the invaders were going to pay bad.

Before they hit the door, the hallway filled with a second storm of loud, wild noise. It sounded like cannons shooting and Greenbeard felt bits of stuff smack him in the behind. The little squig on his shoulder was demolished by a chunk of something that flew past his head. The orkish cries of war turned into a cacophony of moans and cries of alarm.

"Oi! The enemy got us with grenades boyz!" Greenbeard spun around and lifted his slugga. Behind him, he could see big ugly holes torn in the walls of his nice corridor. So, the enemy had torn their way in from other rooms, eh? They dared to smash big old holes in his ship. He would get right back at them. In the midst of the crowd of his boyz he could see them: grey-clad humie space marine boyz that only showed up to the biggest scraps. So, he was worthy of being called a big scrap, huh?

"Mass on em!" Greenbeard yelled as a screaming ork hurled through the air, flying past him. He could count seven of the big guys in with his boyz. Their pistols blew holes in rough, tough green noggins. Ferocious screaming blades, axes and swords both, chopped through green bodies and covered the floor in red gore. Greenbeard saw three boyz standing side by side cloven in two by a space marine with a two-handed axe. His boyz fumbled around, trying to find enough space to swing their choppas. Ineffective slugga rounds snapped back from the space marine plate.

Greenbeard had heard of these guys but never seen them. Wow, they could fight like a drunken warboss. Whichever ork that even approached those humies was ripped from this life by an angry blade of whirling metal teeth. Dead boyz piled up. This wasn't a proper fight! His orks were being made a mockery of.

"I'll kill ya," Greenbeard snarled, rage growing in his tiny brain. "I'll spilla yer guts!" He ran forward, his slugga blasting away. He thought he was hitting. He saw a boy near the axe-wielding humie he was shooting at tumble back, bleeding from a stray slugga round. It was as if Greenbeard's shots didn't exist.

"ARGH! Dat's not fair!" Greenbeard heaved his slugga at the space marine, who cut it from the air. The ruined pistol fell into a smoking pile on the floor. Greenbeard drew his choppa just as he came onto the grey marine.

The humies silently melted back through the holes they made.

Greenbeard yelled and fell, his foot catching painfully on a dead ork. He pulled himself up and stabbed a git who was laughing at him.

"After em!" but Greenbeard and his boyz froze then. The surviving orks looked down the hall at a newcomer. A lonely grey marine git stood in the open doorway of the engine room, a bolt pistol in one fist and a chainsword in the other. A second chainsword hung off his back.

Not saying a word, the arrogant humie dropped to one knee and his pistol barked. The ork beside Greenbeard was punched back.

"Der's only one right there! Get him!" Greenbeard roared. He and his mob rushed the loner, forgetting the others. The humie fired twice more and a heavy brute who had pushed his way ahead of Greenbeard stumbled and fell. The humie holstered his pistol and drew his other sword. With two chainblades, the space marine leapt forward.

Greenbeard saw the dual-sworded humie cut into a frothing nob with both of his blades, severing the brute's arms. He pushed the nob back into the mob and his swords danced to his sides, fending off the boyz who were trying to get around him. Wild-eyed attackers came at him, but the marine boy deflected their blows and killed them in return, sometimes in one swing. Broken choppa handles clattered to the ground. Blood roared up in sprays from the man's chainswords. The space marine strode backwards, keeping the closest orks at a distance. His fancy stepping kept him from being overcome. Soon, orks were falling over their dead comrades trying to reach this guy and the assault slowed. No more were the boyz coming at him like bull squiggoths, they were tip-toeing and tripping like a grot that had gotten into his master's beer. And still the humie killed them, his swords dancing all fancy and flashy, taking heaps of good hard boyz out of Greenbeard's crew. A swinging choppa took the warrior in the flank and Greenbeard chuckled when some of the humie's armour cracked. But he did not stop. Still he humiliated the orks and left then twitching and bloody.

"Just die already!" Greenbeard himself at last made his way over his dead crew and shoved a bleeding ork aside so he could get at this annoying twat. His choppa came down in a metal thunderbolt at the humie, who had just enough time to cross his swords and hold them up to keep himself from getting cut in two. The marine staggered back at the hit and one of his chainswords made a repeated DOK DOKKING sound, which reminded Greenbeard of the sound Irun Skull's implants made when they malfunctioned. He noted that the funny sounding sword wasn't spinning its mean teeth. Greenbeard felt proud. That funny fish-thing on the man's shoulders would look nice over his kommand seat. The humie's marine helmet would swing from Greenbeard's belt, they way that yellow one swung from Axebrain's. No honest warboss didn't have at least one fancy marine helmet on their trophy rack. Looks like Greenbeard's marine helmet would be grey and white, with silly white squiggle markings all across it.

"Oi! Behind us! Boss!" yelled someone in the confusion. The other space marines had come back out. Greenbeard could feel his back getting hot. He turned to see his boyz were burning! Humie burna boyz were making eating meat of his dead 'ard orks!

"Ow!" Greenbeard felt a hot pain in his flank. The space marine he was fighting had stabbed him. The humie dashed back from Greenbeard's counter attack and fled into the engine room. Greenbeard went after him, not even noticing the room was too dark to see in. When the door slammed behind him, Greenbeard knew he'd been fooled good. The marine had ran back into the hallway and now the fighting was outside of Greenbeard's reach.

"Coward!" Greenbeard couldn't get the door open. "I'll kill ya!" When the outside went quiet, he knew all his mob was dead. And they hadn't even killed a single space marine.

"I hate ya!" stinking spit flew from Greenbeard's lips. "I hate ya all! I'll find one of ya and I'll chop ya and wear yer helmet on a pole!"

Somewhere on a higher deck, a bomb went off. All Greenbeard felt was a lot of heat as a terrible chain reaction tore through his prized kroozer. Greenbeard cursed all space marines as the walls around him exploded.

* * *

Leonivich holstered his bolter when he saw Azahar's squad. The other captain was coated in gore to the point where his markings were invisible beneath the layer of red. Leonivich was still clean, as were the five brothers who formed most of his escort. Through the window of the bridge, they could see the orkish warship in its death roll. Plasma fires glowed at the brutal ship's tubular engines. Rough wounds ripped open in its superstructure from internal pressure from the Carcharodon's bombs. Debris splashed out from these rends, like sparks from a fire that had been disturbed.

"Two-hundred and nine," Azahar gloated, lifting off his helmet, "ah, orks brother. Orks. Emperor bless them."

"Extraction procedure underway. Thunderhawks returning to staging point," droned the monotone voice from beneath one of the hooded figures seated at the control panels around him. Leonivich took his cape from another hooded man who knelt before him. As Leonivich did up the heavy buckles to attach his cape, once again, a rune detailing some unimportant figure shone up at one of the hooded crew. The rune's light made the six bionic spider eyes that replaced the man's face shine.

"War shoal reforming," reported a second figure. "The _White Storm_ and the _Scylior _stand at port. In line."

"Salvage crews returning. Material projects 126 thousand capital shells."

"Hostile vessel is venting. Structural collapse imminent."

"Orders captain?" asked one of Leonivich's guards.

"I do not want to hear that any of our brothers were sent to the spirits," Leonivich stated to all of them. "Go to the thunderhawk bays and see it done." The honour guard cleared the room.

"Did you not hear me, Azahar?" asked Leonivich, taking a slow seat in his command throne. His power-armoured fingers played across a control console. On a data screen, he pulled up a list of takings from the orkish vessel. Enough material to make the equivalent of 126 thousand ships for the _Dakuwaqa. _67 human slaves. Leonivich would demand a report on that later. He flickered through the list until he came to the item he had personally collected.

"Xenos-modified signal transmitter of non-imperial human design/non-standard Imperial." Officially, Leonivich had smashed into the orkish bridge and killed all those green brutes to steal orkish information. And so he had.

"Azahar?" Leonivich asked again.

"I said two-hundred and nine orks," Azahar said. Leonivich knew he was giving one of his feral grins. "I cannot leave until I hear what my friend did for the spirits."

"I am not your friend here, I am your superior officer," Leonivich stung back. "Please regroup with your company. And clean your damned axes. I want my bridge tidy." He did not listen to Azahar's retort but he heard him leave. For the next few minutes, Leonivich worked over his console, the buzzing voices of the crew directing one another in the background.

Tracing this transmitter's signal had been easy with an auspex set to the right frequency. The armoured brutes that opposed Leonivich's squad as he smashed his way into the bridge of the ork behemoth had been mere target practice. The captain was gone before the hordes of orkish crew who were supposed to be protecting the bridge arrived to find a big hole in one of the floor, from where someone had melted open the grating to liberate the bastardized transmitter.

"Very good," Leonivich mumbled to himself. The ship's huge logic engine had wiped away the orkish code, like a hand wiping away soot to reveal a painting beneath. Piece by piece, the transmitter's purpose was easier to determine. Some function had been alive for the whole time the orks had used it for some other purpose of theirs. Yes, there it was. It was a distress call, just as Leonivich had guessed, operating at a distinctive resonance. It was a very old resonance, ancient, far more advanced than anything the _Dakuwaqa _had. The signal was intelligently trying to reach a certain point in the cosmos, too weak to make it home, but strong enough to follow.

"Technical 7!" Leonivich called as he forwarded the data to one of the crew, "cross-reference that resonance with our archives and its estimated destination. Then send me any results."

"At once my lord," said the crewman he had addressed. The wait took several hours, but Leonivich was patient. When an answer flashed on the screen before the captain's old eyes, he nodded. It was just what his investigation had led him to predict.

**Signature matched: World Eaters fleet, Crusade Era. **

**Destination: Archive classification "Nova Vandalia" former** **penal colony. **

"Technical 5!" Leonivich commanded, "broadcast that transmission minus its directed function towards the region of space where triangulated our brother Carcharodons to be signaling from." Perhaps a stronger transmission would yield results?

* * *

The squad marched down from their thunderhawk, heads up and weapons at ease. At their head marched their sergeant, who stood indistinguishable from his men but for his plasma pistol. Around them, other craft were emptying their warriors into the hangar floor. The two contrasting greys of the Carcharodon's armour were not as clean as they had been.

Brownish stains made the pure white shark ugly. A few studs had to be replaced and some faceplates were dented. Tattoos were broken in parts where ork bullets and blades tore the paint off. Chain blades were thick with chunks of gore. The white faceplates of some were especially red around the mouth. No brother was saying anything.

Qalkip wiped his chainaxe with the blood rag until he could again read the glyphs of feeding that danced across the blade's housing. Folding the rag and handing it to his personal servitor, Qalkip grabbed the wrist of the dead ork he had brought back and marched to the front of the column the brothers were already forming. Everyone fell respectfully still. Even the wounded brother, who was weighed down by the brutal injury in his side, remained still. Qalkip noted with pride at how much gore covered the wounded man's armour. His two bloody chainswords and empty boltpistol had not failed him.

"A fine feeding. Our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor, are proud," began Qalkip. The brothers thumped their weapons against their armour in reply. "Let us pray." Heads bowed. "Oh emperor. Oh spirits."

"Our Emperor, oh spirits," the whole hangar spoke at once, "we dedicate this victory to you. Oh spirits, live forever…" Qalkip had said this prayer a thousand times and then another thousand times. He always said it after a battle. But he felt every word he said. Despite the centuries, it felt as fresh as the day he first heard it.

"…Let the hunt continue," Qalkip finished with the rest of his brothers. He lifted his head again and looked his brothers in their black eyes. "On this feeding, brothers, there were some to whom this, shall we say, minor incident shall forevermore remember this feeding with a warrior's pride. In this feeding, they first took on their power armour and hunted as initiates no more." He looked up and down the line. "Remember your first time in power armour brothers. What was it like? Where did you stand." Qalkip inclined his head upwards. "Where is it up there? Remember these brothers proudly, Carcharodons. When we are all gone, it shall be they who continue the hunt that Nokhang set us upon so that the enemies of the Emperor will never live without a predator crouching behind them." Under his mask, Qalkip smiled. He inevitably remembered his own embarrassing first day as a scout. It was best the chapter never heard of that day. Fortunately, everyone besides Qalkip who had been there was now dead.

"Let us see one of them," Qalkip nodded at the line. "Tyberos!" It took a second for the man to step forth, either from the surprise or the weight of his wound. The space marine in studded armour with the two chainswords, empty bolt pistol and injured flank walked heavily forward. He fell to his knees before the chaplain.

"Sergeant Balor spoke well of your skill with the blade. The dual-wield is a troublesome art to master and even I never could tame it," Qalkip said. "But you may earn many markings yet. For the slaughter you gave the orks I give you the marking of the Teeth of Dakuwaqa." Qalkip signaled with his fingers and Osrar came forward. Osrar was bald and pale and his brow had no service studs. But the twisting shaman-spirit tattoo on his face left no doubt to his station as chaplain, even without his helmet. The younger chaplain crouched by Tyberos, a fine brush in his hand and a clay pot in the other. Delicately, Osrar etched a line of six shark's teeth on the spot on Tyberos' helmet above his right eye. When it was done, Osrar silently retreated and Tyberos arose.

"Thank you, brother-chaplain," Tyberos said. Qalkip smiled and put a fatherly hand on the younger man's shoulder.

"You have passed your first tests, but have you learned your lessons, young one?" Qalkip asked, just loud enough for Tyberos to hear. A soft chuckle came from behind Tyberos' helmet.

"Yes brother-chaplain, I have learned my lessons," Tyberos said.

"How can you prove it?"

Tyberos pointed to his new teeth. Qalkip nodded proudly.

"I am happy for you, brother Tyberos," Qalkip kicked the dead ork. "Make a fetish of this one's bones. Then hang it with pride with the others."

"Gladly, brother."

When Qalkip left the front of the line, the brothers began thumping their weapons against their armour again. Here and there, a brother did not follow suit. They were those men who had never fought in power armour before.

"I am happy for all of you," Qalkip said as he stalked off into the darkness.


	6. The Sharks Gather

Someone standing on the moon below watching the stars would stagger back in surprise when the superstructure of the battle barge hurtled to a stop, blotting out the stars.

"We march to feed on the eternal hunt."

"Gorge on death!" everyone replied.

"We march to feed as the predator of all."

"Gorge on death!" came the reply.

Shells rained down from the vast ship that hid the sky, shattering orkish fortifications and throwing huge green bodies high into the air. Ugly tanks blasted apart. Mobs of snarling beasts became one or two dazed survivors.

"We march to the feed, for the chapter, for the Imperium, for the spirits, for the Emperor!" Astraghar the Red Wake strode into his position at the head of the teleportarium.

"For the Emperor!" everyone roared. Energy sparked up from the floor and the Red Brethren were teleported into the thick of it.

Appearing in the middle of a desert of craters and ruins, Astraghar adjusted his helmet to see through the dust that filled the air. Around him, the terminators of the Red Brethren were stepping over rubble to evaluate their position on the moon. Each warrior was armed with a lightning claw and a razor-edged storm shield. Astraghar himself wore the legendary chainclaw _Hunger_ on one arm and boasted the assault cannon _Hate_ upon the other.

"Lord Red Wake," terminator-sergeant Valsect spoke over the vox, "auspex shows hunters at our starboard. We're .003 degrees off target."

"And so we are," Astraghar growled. He turned to the right and headed forward, his faithful Red Brethren by his side. In the distance, Astraghar heard the xenos' hateful warcry.

"Orks," reported one of the brethren.

"Gorge brothers!" Astraghar commanded as waves of dark figures burst from the dusty air. He had to admire their courage. Orks with broken limbs or shrapnel wounds charged when humans might cower. They were worthy of a chapter master's bullets.

Sweeping _Hate _in an arc, Astraghar sprayed the foe with hot bullets that cut charging orks in two. One ork neared the chapter master, a heavy axe in hand.

Valsect sprung up and fixed the ork through the heart with his claw, then pushed the dead ork from his claw with his shield. At once, the Red Brethren counter-charged. Astraghar let _Hate_ rest and joined his guards. Orks bowled over under the weight of the terminators. Claws severed limbs and shields crushed bone. Their armour dismissed orkish swings. Orkish determination turned into animal panic. But the bulky terminators could keep up. Valsect lifted a struggling ork over his head and let warm blood dribble onto him, before plunging the alien into the dirt and driving his claw through its guts, stilling it.

"Onwards, brethren," Astraghar said, trampling the skull of an ork that was crawling away with one huge grey foot. "Auspex readings?"

"We are nearer, my lord. They are still. They must have noticed the ship." As the Red Brethren walked onward, they could hear the holy voices of bolters and chainblades through the haze. To his left, Astraghar made out the tall dark form of one of his predator tanks. Good, the armour had landed on time.

Through the murky dust, a squad of Carcharodons stalked forwards, blood on their chainblade bayonets.

"Lord Red Wake," spoke the squad's sergeant over the vox. "Contact with our brothers. They have the compound occupied ahead. I have informed them of us."

"And Leonivich is still their Lord Pale Maw?"

"I did not ask." Astraghar headed forward towards the sound of combat, using _Hate _to turn a wounded, stumbing ork to paste on the way, barely needing to look.

The ork's ramshackle scrapwork fort stood out before him when the dust cleared. Astraghar noted with pleasure at the piles of xenos dead around it. A mess of living orkish warriors flooded the outside in a moat. Brothers were around them, feeding at will, slipping from threats, punching down hordes of the enemy or cutting flesh from bone when they came near.

Without a cry, Astraghar and his brothers stalked forward. The Red Brethren formed a wall of shields and crushed their way into the horde. More orks were flattened by terminator boots. Green bodies pounded at the storm shields, only to be stabbed from behind them. Orks who tried to swoop behind them were met with a hail of fire from _Hate. _A huge ork encased in armour plate stormed through _Hate's _bullets. Astraghar honoured him with a death from _Hunger._ Twisted, useless metal scrap dropped from the chainclaw's grip when the ork finally fell.

More brothers had joined the slaughter. To Astraghar's right, a squad of brothers with chainswords and pistols were fighting in wheel formation. Bolter squads were advancing, guns up. Blood sprayed like water when orks charged them and chainblade bayonets opened their necks.

Elsewhere, he noted with satisfaction that one brother, who wore the Teeth of Dakuwaqa over his right eye, fought with two chainswords. He fought and he fought well. Orks taller than him stopped hard when the brother fixed them beneath the chin and at the leg in one fluid motion that led him from danger and into his next target. He ducked beneath an axe and chopped down its wielder, as well as the ork coming up behind him without even looking. Good. So cautious Leonivich hadn't let duel-wielding lapse into extinction amongst his troops.

"Gorge yourself on the deaths of the enemy!" Astraghar roared over the vox. Even if the orks could hear Astraghar from inside his armour, they would not understand the beautiful Gothic tongue. That's one reason why they were so unworthy of life. Astraghar thought this as he crushed another dying ork's skull with his foot. He looked up and noted with satisfaction at the thinning enemy numbers.

"Lord Red Wake, all ork armour eliminated," reported the armoured squadron over the vox.

"Return," ordered Astraghar. "We are done here." Lazily, he raised _Hate _and blasted an ork from its feet, just as it was coming up behind a brother who had left his back open. He searched for more targets, but saw nothing else but living Carcharodons and dead orks.

"No ritual for this feeding," Astraghar ordered. "Let Pale Maw have their little triumph." He eyed around. Bloody squads of space marines stood about the Red Brethren. Even he could not tell who was from what fleet. Astraghar deactivated his sound barrier and let his voice be heard.

"I am Astraghar the Red Wake, chapter master. I wish for one of Pale Maw to come before me," his voice thundered. "Who is senior here?" The silent ranks shuffled aside and a tall brother wielding a pair of chainaxes stepped forward. Another dual-wielder, and axes no less. Perhaps Leonivich had changed since they last met.

"Lord Red Wake, it is I, Azahar, now I am captain of the 5th Company of the Carcharodons. Captain Leonivich will be proud to see this," the man spoke. Astraghar was aghast.

"Azahar? The spirits must be kinder than I thought. You made captain?" Astraghar wondered if maybe this was a different Azahar from the reckless brother he had once known. The surprise in his voice made a few voices chuckle over the vox. "It is well enough then. Where is Lord Pale Maw?"

"Fifteen kilometers that way," Azahar pointed to the south. "Our objective is done here. Thanks to…" he looked up. "By the Emperor, what in the galaxy did you do to the _Nicor_? What happened to the aft-batteries?" How had he made captain? This was no way for a Carcharodon of any rank to speak.

Astraghar looked at the muddy ground, where he had just loosed a short burst of fire from _Hate, _throwing up some specks of dirt_. _He pushed Azahar's rough conduct to the back of his mind before Astraghar sunk deeper into rage. Luckily for his reputation, none of the brothers had flinched at this outburst.

"Withdraw as my orders will. Brothers of Pale Maw, go with your brothers to the Red Wake war shoal. Valsect? See our withdraw is done and order the _Nicor_ to depopulate this moon," Astraghar commanded. "Dismissed Azahar. Report to your lord. I wish to speak with him."

Astraghar's personal quarters aboard the _Nicor _were dark, but for a dim lantern that shone from the ceiling. A throne of rock cut from Terran granite stood in the center. Prayer scrolls, totems and dozens of the chapter master's personal trophies decorated the walls. Alien skulls and heretical helmets gazed in mute protest from hooks and plenty empty hooks hung for future conquests. Nine ornate chairs made mostly from the bones of traitors sat in a semicircle around the throne.

He had removed his armour, donned his white cloak and done the proper rituals to appease the spirits. Meditating in the throne, calming his mind, Astraghar imagined darkness. He thought of his body lying at the bottom of the darkest, deepest, most remote ocean trench imaginable. Peace and calm to balm his mind, which burned with hatred for his enemies. He shut his oil-black eyes and imagined the stillness of the void. His breathing slowed and his pulse softened. Slowly, Azahar and the taste of ork blood drifted from his mind and was lost in the depths.

There was a knock at the door.

"Enter," Astraghar was not surprised when Leonivich stepped inside. He still wore his armour, though without a helmet and his favourite bolter hung from his back. He had fewer new tattoos on his armour than Astraghar hoped.

"My lord Red Wake," Leonivich bowed.

"There is no one here, Merik, you may call me Astraghar," the chapter master spoke. He rose from his throne. "It is good to see you." They embraced like blood brothers. "What happened to Akladi?"

"Brother Akladi fell to the eldar some decades back. Brother Azahar replaced him," Leonivich said. "I am afraid there was not much we could have done for it. The eldar hunted us that day."

"Any other deaths I would be concerned of?" Astraghar asked, dreading the answer.

"Lhoken died with Akadi and so did Ajobwa. Frosan was killed as we fed on Hrud."

"Brother Angelo?"

"He lives. Still a sergeant under me. Right where you left him. Also Qalkip lives. He sends his regards."

"Send him mine too. Brother Aldrecht?"

"Of course. Aldrecht. Killed by creatures of the unreal and their mortal slaves." Leonivich sighed with acceptance. "So Angelo and I are the last living recruits from the Dyphonifus feeding."

"Not quite. Fredist is still with me."

"Really? I heard he was killed."

"You heard wrong," Astraghar replied. "Fredist still says you are too wrapped in the codex. He remarked to me on the way back up that he thought your formation looked too rigid. But I cannot help but wonder why you let Azahar use two chain axes."

"He likes axes. They make him feel strong. I am content to point him at targets and let him murder them. Truly, and do not speak of this, I trust him only to lead, not to really plan. He is somewhat slow-minded. I have to rely on captain Delroc a lot."

"But you need good fighters. I suppose he has a whole squad of dual-wielders."

"No, he alone in Pale Maw uses two blades regularly."

"I thought I saw another man of yours with two chainswords."

"I apologize, you are correct. A new brother, Tyberos, he does that. He forms the shock element of sergeant Balor's squad. Has a knack for killing orks on their own terms."

"So I saw. I would like to review your forces afterwards. How many brothers?"

"Four-fifty-five."

"Spirits damn us. We're two hundred over. I have five-sixty and Black Fin puts us at twelve-hundred-ten. Perhaps I am not codex enough." Leonivich raised his eyebrows in amazement.

"The spirits send a sign. When did you speak with Black Fin?" he asked.

"We had them trailing after us until we picked up your signal. When did you send it?"

"Seven months back. The orks kept us in this area since," Leonivich said. "How fares Lord Black Fin? Or is he with the Emperor now?"

"Hohezax is pursuing his own targets but he knows you are here. He sent Captain Incurio and the feral riders as go-betweens. They are aboard the _Lord Nokhang_. If you want to talk to Black Fin, speak with Incurio," replied Astraghar. He returned to his throne. "But enough pleasantries. Why did you signal me? Sit down." Leonivich obeyed. "My librarians think you are planning something."

"They are not wrong," Leonivich looked at the empty seats. "If Black Fin is nearby I would like to have captain Hohezax here. And some more captains, like this Incurio. Who is Incurio? I never met him."

"You may soon. I can call a summit with ease. And as chapter master, the commitment of the whole chapter on a campaign is my decision." Astraghar searched his friend's tired face. "What do you want?"

"The Helmet of the Murdered Raven. Do you know of it?" asked Leonivich. Astraghar thought deeply.

"It is that Heresy-era Raven Guard helmet we took off the trophy rack of a dead Black Legionnaire, Iscariot, I think his allies named him. Is it still in the Pale Maw reliquary?" Astraghar asked.

"My tech marines restored it some time ago. Inside it, they discovered a pict-recording of its owners death before it was claimed as a trophy," explained Leonivich carefully, always reading his lord's expression. "I had hoped to make it serviceable you see. In whatever case, we compared the skull of the slain heretic we claimed it from and the man in the recording. They were not the same. So we went through the archives to find data taken from the day we liberated the helmet. It mentioned that our chapter had learned from interrogations that the helmet was traded to the man we took it off from a world called Nova Vandalia from the heretic who first stole it, but gave no signals as to where this world may be. Some time ago, we were searching the data log of a pirate ship we had fed on and it mentioned Nova Vandalia as a place ruled by the armies of chaos and that it was nearby. After feeding on some orks who I know use stolen human technology, I followed a trail that brought me to a distress beacon that pinpoints the world's location. If you watch the pict-recording, you would agree that if the man from Isstvan still lives, he must be punished."

"Hm," Astraghar thought. The meeting of three war shoals at once was a rare thing indeed. It seemed to perfect, too planned. To ignore this might bring bad luck. Astraghar had to calm himself with calm thoughts.

"I shall summon Hohehax. In the meantime, assess my forces and prepare a course and relay any relevant information to the _Nicor. _Also…" Astraghar paused, "all this for a simple act of vengeance? Is this the Way of the Predator?"

"Yes," Leonivich nodded strongly. "We are also not completely ignorant about Nova Vandalia. Archived data taken from enemy slaves taken the day we first found the Raven Guard helmet say it is a cold, rocky world with three continents and a large ocean. It has little tillable soil. The World Eaters, or whatever heretics live there, control a moon or some space fort which produces food. In exchange for loyalty, the chaos marines provide the surface with just enough food to keep their populations from shrinking. The planet's nations constantly fight. Those men who impress their chaos masters are elevated into some warrior society called the "Pilgrims" who worship the gods of the unreal and their spawn. The theory about them seems to be the fallen space marines use the planet as a breeding ground for their private armies. They are also said to rule the world either from a station in orbit or some massive fortress-city isolated from the rest of the world. I imagine the locals are slavishly dedicated to chaos and the unreal."

Astraghar could not dismiss a dark suspicion he held in his heart. There were thousands of relics in the Pale Maw reliquary and there was a very good reason why he knew the Helmet of the Murdered Raven by name. There was a dark rumor among the captains about the helmet.

Astraghar closed his eyes and imagined he was underwater. When he opened his eyes again, he spoke.

"With my authority as chapter master, I hereby declare war on the people of Nova Vandalia."

"It is a lot more roomy than the _Daquwaka,_" observed Kiesn as he, Aobwen, Aetheus and Tyberos strode through one of the corridors leading from the _Nicor'_s massive hangar. Tyberos agreed, looking back once more into the hangar. The ceiling of the oval-roofed monster of a cavern where Red Wake stored its ships appeared to be barren. The four stepped through a door that opened outwards in dozens of triangular points. This door was typical of doors aboard the _Nicor._

"Angelo tells us that Red Wake carries more terminators than Pale Maw," Aobwen remarked, "all the hallways are designed for them. The Red Brethren dwell aboard this ship and the chapter master too." Tyberos was distracted when three young men in what looked like neophyte robes, only they were red instead of white.

"The tanks must be repaired by next bell," said an old man in similar dress who followed them. The four space marines exchanged glances.

"Those were not neophytes. They were slaves. Living slaves? Why?" asked Aetheus, "servitors are better." Tyberos touched a spot on his wrist. Despite his enhanced physique, his wrist still had an old scar whitening it just below his palm. Servitors were convenient. They make weak humans into something better. Those with weak minds protested at the conversion process, but they did not matter. Every normal human lived less than one century. Why not make something useful of them before they ended their short lives? Still, living men were easier to look at than servitors.

"Balor told me Red Wake does things differently from us. I hear instead of Abyssal Labour, Red Wake breaks its recruits with ship duties. Those who are not worthy are not asked to join," Tyberos said. "Just ignore the slaves." They continued on, stopping for a moment to pray at a statue of Corax that stood in an alcove between them and their destination. It was taller, more detailed and more dramatic than the stiff, less-than-life-sized image that the _Dakuwaqa _displayed inside its chapel. Twice, they passed across a bridge over a descending pit inside the ship. Looking down, they could see the pit filled with broken trophies pilfered from dead enemies. Tyberos guessed that was what Red Wake did to remember their feedings instead of building bone fetishes.

The only servitor they saw walked on metal spider legs. It watched them when they came to the training room and stepped inside.

"AH! ARAW!" the Red Wake warrior cried with every fall of his sparring sword. His Pale Maw opponent was silent, weaving away more often than parrying with his own weapon.

The Red Wake training room had iron walls and seats built into the floor. Like the rest of the ship's interior, it made the _Dakuwaqa_'s features look like an unfinished imitation of what the _Nicor _had. Looking up, Tyberos saw a maze of hanging metal cubes almost a kilometer overhead and a dock on the wall with a setup that suggested some kind of jump pack training course. Huge mechanical training obstacles dotted the floor in orderly rows. Tyberos recognized some from the Beast Chamber and guessed at the function of others.

"That one shoots rockets," Tyberos pointed. "I wish the Beast Chamber had that." He gripped the handles of his two chainswords that were still locked at his side. His fascination distracted him from the spectacle.

Young scouts, armoured brothers, tattooed veterans and tall, fearsome captains formed a crowd to watch the duel between War Shoals. Almost everyone left their helms to one side so that faces would show. Two of the most senior brothers amongst them, Qalkip and a Red Wake captain, kept their helmets on.

"Tyber," Aetheus tapped on Tyberos' side, "come and join our brothers." He led Tyberos into the Pale Maw side of the crowd, where Kiesn and Aobwen already stood. The brothers of Pale Maw beat their weapons against their armour when the Red Wake brother was knocked to the ground. Both men withdrew, turned in their sparring weapons and reclaimed their real ones. Both sides searched for their next champion. Tyberos worked his way towards Balor.

"How are they?" Tyberos asked his sergeant.

"They have us 8-5," Balor said. "Red Wake trains with bladed weapons more than we do I believe."

"Hm. Vain shows of force then rather than efficiency?" Tyberos mumbled, noting with awe the variety of weapons Red Wake carried. He saw one-handed swords and axes like the ones Pale Maw had, but he also saw claws, glaives and two-handed versions of familiar chain weapons.

"Do not curse them in their own ship. They are our brothers. Our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor, will frown at that," Balor said. "No wasted energy. No true hatred." Tyberos did suddenly realize that he hadn't heard any insults so far. He apologized and watched.

Fluid, hard-to-catch Pale Maw champions were struck down by Red Wake counterparts who used the same techniques but with far more power.

"Gorge on death!" roared the Red Wake brethren when a Pale Maw champion fell. Tyberos banged his chainswords on his armour in tune with his war shoal when a Red Wake champion fell.

Tyberos felt some brotherly pride when Aetheus was sent forward to fight. He gripped his sparring blade in one hand and posed his other as though it held a bolt pistol. When, after all, would a man like Aetheus have no gun? His Red Wake opponent was a young marine with fire in his eyes. No one began the duel for them. It began when the two predators saw each other.

The first thing Aetheus did was point his empty hand at the Red Wake brother and mimic the shooting of a bolt pistol.

"Bang!" Aetheus shouted.

A few dark chuckles came from the crowd. The Red Wake champion stepped back and clenched his pointed teeth.

"This is not a game!" the Red Wake brother hissed.

"War cannot be tamed," smiled Aetheus. The laughs came again, louder this time. "You are now shot dead, unless you can kill me before you bleed."

"The spirits know that is untrue."

"The spirits are not here to tell me so."

The Red Wake brother charged forward at Aetheus' unguarded side. If he swung, he'd only have an invisible bolt pistol to get past. In reply, Aetheus stepped to one side, making a spinning strike. The Red Wake brother hit the place where Aetheus used to be and Aetheus smashed the brother to the floor.

Tyberos roared Aetheus' name in triumph as he and the Pale Maw brothers banged their weapons on their armour. When the Red Wake brother got back up and tried to swing at Aetheus' back, two older brothers restrained him and pulled him back. Tyberos later heard the short-tempered brother was flogged by his sergeant.

"I do not remember reading of that in the writings of Guilliman," Tyberos said when Aetheus rejoined them.

"It is in the Emperor's own strategy manual," replied Aetheus with a wink. "Come on then? How about you? Red Wake still has some victories over us."

"Yes," Balor waved over Azahar. "Captain, let Tyberos go next. He must be as good with the chainsword as any brother of his age from Red Wake."

"We are down five victories," Azahar huffed. "Tyberos, are you prepared?"

"Two dueling blades for me!" shouted Tyberos. Opposite, he heard a Red Wake brother warn his war shoal of how Tyberos would be armed. As Tyberos waited, Azahar gave his distinct feral grin.

"I remember an idiot youth of a scout getting his entire squad paralyzed by the Beast Chamber before his first combat drop," Azahar mused. "He loved to practice with his blades." Tyberos accepted his edgeless swords and put his real weapons aside.

"Shall this be penance then?" Tyberos asked. He walked to the middle. The man who Red Wake sent forth was a shorter brother in power armour that was totally unadorned. He too carried two blades. He looked like he had just been promoted from the scouts.

Orks ran into Tyberos' blades. He had killed too many of them to count. Bow scorpions were too slow to escape. How would a man fight? Tyberos had never killed a human with two swords and certainly never a chaos space marine with them, in defiance of his youthful dreams. So how would…

The Red Wake warrior moved startlingly fast. Tyberos barely had enough time to get out of his way and strike away the younger man's attacks. The brother's blades were a tornado around him, swirling and swishing, leaving no point unguarded. Tyberos tried to read his movements the way he'd been shown, but he could not. The other man was too fast.

The Red Wake champion's sword slammed into Tyberos' head. Then, the other sword came down.

When Tyberos opened his eyes, he was being pulled away from the circle. He could see his two sparring blades on the ground. A warm dribble was making its way down from his throbbing skull.

"Gorge on death!" Red Wake's powerful cry split the air.

"Are you well?" Aetheus asked into Tyberos' ear.

"That was worse than he should have given," said Kiesn. The two stopped pulling their injured brother when Tyberos could sit up and see the circle. A new fight had already begun.

"Here. So you can watch while you heal," remarked Aetheus as Kiesn headed back. "Do not feel ashamed. How many men in the galaxy could survive that?" Aetheus followed Kiesn.

'That was…incredible. Is that how Red Wake dual-wields?' Tyberos thought. He spotted his young opponent in the Red Wake side of the crowd, shaking hands with his sergeant.

The door beside Tyberos yawned open and another brother came in. No, there were more, but Tyberos couldn't tell how many from where he was. Sitting at their feet like a child, Tyberos could see the side of the leg of one of the newcomers. Azahar hurried over.

"Black Fin, I believe?" Azahar said, stopping in front of the group. "Have you come to join the fun?"

"Are you Captain Azahar of Pale Maw?" asked a cold voice.

"So I appear to be," replied Azahar. "You are…let me see, Black Fin? Incurio?"

"Chapter Master Astraghar has declared war on Nova Vandalia. Inform the men. My riders and I will be departing to hunt its people for a few days. We will submit our report to chapter command when we are done. I have summoned Lord Black Fin. My war shoal is on its way."

"The whole chapter will come?" Azahar grinned. "The spirits will feast tonight, do you think the Emperor…"

"Black Fin will deploy to Nova Vandalia in vanguard," interrupted the other man. "My riders and I will deploy to scout. We will go into the ocean. It will be a stealth action so do not try and vox us. A campaign briefing will occur within the next 8 bells."

"So first blood to Black Fin? I understand," Azahar nodded. He looked behind him as another Pale Maw warrior was knocked to the floor. "Do you have time for a round in the ring?"

"No, I do not. Riders! The hangar!" The men left, leaving Azahar alone.

The report came that contact had been made. Slaves and neophytes hurried about the bridge, assisting their commanders at their posts. With the rise of his huge hand, the bridge went silent.

"Ork flagship!" shouted Astraghar towards the window. It wasn't really a window, more a transparent wall as thick as a bulkhead. From it, Astraghar could see the long rough body of the _Nicor_ and the unmoving leviathans around her, swimming beautifully against a starry backdrop. The _Nicor_'s first-officer told him they were pointing directly at the cloud of ork ships. Astraghar took the man at his word.

"Ork flagship!" Astraghar tried once more when to reply came.

"**Yaw yer don't gotta blow it out twice," **crackled the rough voice from the vox link. "**Yer gonna start talkin' or get da 'eck outta me radio!**"

"Ork flagship," Astraghar said, "I think we can make a deal." From the corner of his eye, he could see Leonivich helping his vox officers extend the transmission. Leonivich nodded to Astraghar, who nodded back. From the back of the bridge, three slaves began pushing buttons.

"**Aw, a humie! What's ya doin' kontacting the battlekroozer 'uv warboss Axebrain?" **a crude title, even for an ork.

"You want power and conquest? Come to this world and face a real fight. Attack Nova Vandalia."

"**Ha! Yer one bold humie if you fink I's gonna walk inna yer trap!" **Axebrain barked.

"No trap," replied Astraghar. "I just want this skulking in space to end in a good honest brawl. I hate the men of Nova Vandalia and I want them dead. We are sending you the location of the world."

"**Da world is a long way away. Real long way away. You know wut humie?"** Axebrain barked, "**I fink I'll jus' keep my waaaagh! on a-going, jus to piss ya off. Keep raidin' us. We'll be waitin."**

"Just to piss me off?" laughed Astraghar. "Do not give me your reasons, give your warriors your reasons. I am patching our conversation over to your fleet, along with the directions."

"**What? AWWW! Fine den! I'll come along, sack yer lil world and kill ya too! No deal. Yoo jus kalled the rage uv da orks upon yer 'ead!" **Axebrain shouted. "**Wots yer name? Lemme hear it so I can find'n killa ya."**

"Long range scans confirm the ork fleet is heading towards us," said the first-officer from his seat. "All at once. Yes, our transmissions got through to the rest of the fleet. Axebrain will have trouble keeping order if he avoids Nova Vandalia now."

"Very good. Hard about!" Astraghar took a seat in his command throne to command the two war shoals to take careful position within the Nova Vandalia system.

"Why are you angry? All I ask is you get rid of Nova Vandalia's rulers," Astraghar said, "We have a wreck of one of your ships that you can salvage. I believe it's called the _Rampager._" It took a little while for the picket ships to find the wreck of that beast.

"**Oi! I lost dat fing a whole lotta time ago! You killed Greenbeard?**"

"We did not, we found it wrecked. We will give it back to you when the war ends and you can restore it. But first, destroy Nova Vandalia while I help make your invasion easier. Afterwards I will let you loot the world. In return, you have to stay away from my ships or I will hurl the _Rampager _into the closest star." Something about this blackmail sparked something in the ork's mind.

"**Haw! Yoo fink good humie. Okays. Ya got a deal. We smash da world an' keep back from yer humie gitz, then you buzz off when the world's a burning." **The transmission ended.

* * *

"Nova Vandalia has a population of between 800 million and 1.4 billion," said the captain to the Carcharodon horde who stood at the ready in the dark briefing chamber. Behind him was a hologram of a vast grey-blue ball with three great continents.

"The orkish invasion will slam into the world and throw it into disarray. We will exploit this disarray, soften the planet's defenses and assail the masters of this world when they least expect it. At all times during this campaign, you will avoid engaging the orks. Engage and kill the humans at your discretion. To kill fallen space marines is why we feed. Destroy them wherever you find them. War shoals Red Wake and Pale Maw shall form the main assault. Black Fin will go in first and taste the prey, finding their weaknesses. Astraghar the Red Wake shall command the fleet. Leonivich the Pale Maw shall command the landing. You will all be informed of your specific assignments when you rejoin your squads."

* * *

War was coming.

Aboard the _Dakuwaqa, _Tyberos set a bolter shell with his name upon it by the bone shrine and spoke the holy words. Beside him, Aobwen, Aetheus, Balor, Assar, Kiesn and the other four members of Balor's 2nd Company squad did the same.

"Para bellum," said Balor, lifting his plasma pistol to his chest. The others lifted their bolters and affixed the chainblade bayonets.

"Para bellum."

Tyberos twirled his chainswords. He did not feel as much of an expert with them since his defeat. Yet, swords he would have.

'Perhaps I can kill chaos traitor marines as I always wished?' Tyberos thought. He threw the childish thought from his mind and focused on his duty.

"Orks are easy compared to what is coming," Balor said to his squad. "For some of you, this is your first major campaign. We will be on this planet perhaps for years. Brothers will die. If you must die too, die with blood in your eyes."

"Aye sergeant," the squad replied.

* * *

War was coming.

Aboard the _Dakuwaqa, _Leonivich was removing his cape. He would not need it if he was going to command the landing. His bolter was clasped to his belt. Leonivich looked outside at a distant brownish star. It was no star, but a planet. This was his first look at Nova Vandalia. Leonivich did not let the sight overcome him and he went back to work.

* * *

War was coming.

Aboard the _Nicor, _Astraghar rose from his throne and nodded to the two slaves who stood at the ready. He could barely contain his hatred for the people who he was about to attack.

"Now I am ready," he said, his voice twitching. "Prepare my terminator armour."

* * *

War was coming.

Aboard the _Dakuwaqa _Azahar roared in rage, practicing his motions in his personal quarters. He was excited, like a child. Yes, he was very excited with war-lust. Azahar activated his axes and let them roar with him. His motions vivisected invisible enemies.

* * *

War was coming.

Aboard the _Lord Nokhang_, Captain Incurio watched the last land speeder undertow loaded into the thunderhawk-transporter's magnetic claws. The huge cages were just beginning to be loaded aboard the thunderhawk-transporter's main chamber. Good.

With a few flicks of his fingers, he signed to his riders to board. He couldn't be at the formal commencement ritual, but Incurio never was. He had no patience for rituals.

A few hours later, they were hurtling towards the vast ball of a planet that was Nova Vandalia.

* * *

Aboard the _Dakuwaqa, _they stood alone with the newly thawed sacrificial victim from the cryogenic vaults. Unknown years of the deepest cold had made the woman weak, but her waking from her cold slumber would not last. The cryogenic solution still discoloured her withered flesh in a few areas. Shuffling, shivering, she fell to the ground when the servitor released her. Over her, the two chaplains stood.

"Pardon me," apologized Osrar when he noticed Qalkip wince. "Your helmet is…" A wet ripping sound came through the dark chapel when Osrar jerked off Qalkip's helmet. "It is off, chaplain."

"Thank you," Qalkip replied. Blood was already dribbling down his face and fat drops of it rained out of the helmet in Osrar's. hands. "My axe." In the darkness, the defenseless woman found the strength to speak.

"Wh…where am I?" she asked. "My…my ship…attacked. Grey men in grey armour…my family. My boy." She shivered pathetically. "Oh gods, where is my boy? My son." Qalkip was getting tired of listening to her whine. A cruel excitement quickened his blood. It was a dangerous, reckless anger he could not submit to in combat. But in here, it was different.

"I am sorry, but I must feed so that I may fight. Your pain will be short, but you will live with the spirits forever," Qalkip's bleeding lips hissed. His lidless eyes fixed on his victim.

"Where is my son Tyberos?" the woman asked nobody.

In a bestial yell that shook the walls, Qalkip descended. He hacked the woman asunder with his bellowing axe. He hacked great chunks of meat and bone from her body. Blood washed across his black armour. He lapped blood from his hands. He shoveled ground up bone and flesh into his mouth through chops. He stomped in contempt on the woman's ruined body and still hit her more. Pulped meat fell from his lipless mouth, so he shoveled in more. The effect was already taking hold. Flesh grew to fill the holes on Qalkip's face. Areas where the necrophage had eaten were filled back in. His face no longer bled when his helmet went back on. Underneath it, Qalkip felt his helmet's auto-systems spray a cold substance that smelled like ammonia onto his skin. This substance would seal his skin against future bleeding, at least, until the necrophage did its work again and he would have to thaw out another victim.

Stepping out into the light, Qalkip marched to the head of the assembled Pale Maw companies. Everyone stood before their vehicles. Qalkip took his place beside Leonivich at the front of the hangar. After Qalkip led a quick prayer, Leonivich lifted his bolter above his head.

"Nova Vandalia will fall!" Leonivich yelled. "For the Emperor!"

Every man thumped their weapon against their armour twice.

"Pale Maw!"

THUMP THUMP.

"Pale Maw."

THUMP THUMP.

"Pale Maw."

The three war shoals swam to war. That was day 1 of the Nova Vandalia feeding.


	7. The Hungry Ocean

**Nova Vandalia Feeding. Day 1**

**Somewhere in the Vandalian Planetary Ocean…**

The chopping waves crashed against the side of the freight barge. The eternal expanse of ocean lying in all directions lay beneath the eternal night sky. Aldin pulled his coat tighter around himself and handled his musket close to his chest. The only benefit to night watch was the view. But it got boring fast and even the slightest lapse in this pointless watch would bring the boatswain down on him. There was a saying that there are no easy things on Nova Vandalia. Aldin mused on these words with a little grin. Standing around and doing nothing all night with nothing to watch for but what was going on with the two other ships in the convoy had the sentence of death if it wasn't done right.

The fuel they were hauling from the drilling rig way behind them was more important than his life, or the lives of the hundred workers aboard each barge. The Bloodlords had shouted down a warning to Nova Vandalia's petty kingdoms that some invading horde was on its way. Whether or not it was so, the lords and their courts had been forced to redirect their efforts towards defending the world itself. The Bloodlords' army, the Pilgrims, were even working to garrison the planet's strongpoints.

'None of those pilgrim bastards can take up watch?' thought Aldin in frustration. Compared to what the Pilgrims had, Aldin's musket was a joke.

BLAM!

The force of the barge shaking threw Aldin to the wooden deck. His thoughts rolled in a daze trying to imagine what had happened while he got back up. His knees burned with pain and he leaned against a railing. He shouted for help as he spotted what had happened to the other ships.

Both of the other barges were burning from their rears. Flames were creeping up from the waterline and bursting out of windows in the crew cabins at the back. He could see shadows of crewmen running about from the flames. Someone had bombed them. Looking upwards, Aldin saw no planes and no flashes in the sky to suggest a war in space. All he saw was the quiet darkness and a scenery of sleeping stars.

"Fire!" Aldin shouted. He was not surprised when he saw the crew quarters on his barge ablaze too. He rang the watch-bell as crewmen appeared up to throw wet rags and buckets at the inferno. It was a hopeless rescue.

"Signal red and abandon ship. The bulkheads have failed and we're going under! We're under attack!" roared the captain above the clamor of frightened sailors, stepping through the mess of running men on the barge's main deck. He lifted off his cap and tossed it away. Aldin noticed it was smoking. "Watch," the captain filled Aldin's view. In the glow of the fire, his grey eyes seemed to glow like a daemon's. "What happened?"

"They all burst at once. Nothing up there, no ships out at sea. I checked port, starboard…" Aldin shrugged. Off to one side, twenty men were entering one of the five bright yellow rafts the barge had. Slowly, the automatic pulleys lowered it into the ocean. Aldin could feel the ship's decks growing uneven. He hurried towards a massing group of crewmen, all still in their nightclothes, who had deployed a raft and were fitting into its wooden benches. In the water, Aldin saw ten more rafts, twenty men to each, rowing like drunken water beetles from the ships that were definitely tilting backwards in the water's embrace. The name of their city of origin was painted in white on each barge's side a good meter above the water. Looking at the closest barge, Aldin saw the name was half underwater.

"There's something in the water!" yelled a barrel-chested rating who stood up in his raft and raised his arms. He pointed frantically at the chopping waves. "Right there! I saw!" The noise of men miraculously died down. No one cried for help or screamed for orders from their officers.

"An underwater bomb?" Aldin whispered. "That would explain it." He was now the last man aboard his barge. Before him was a raft with nineteen men and one extra space. Ivoran nodded at the space and slapped it.

"Before we go down," Ivoran said through his moustache.

"But what's in the water?" Aldin asked. "What did he see?" below, sailors were looking at the water now, all of them featherless herons that could not find a fish. A few sailors were reaching under benches to produce yellow lock-shaped life vests and some were sitting back, nursing burns. But for the most part, the three crews were bunching their rafts up, around a captain who had lit a handheld light-beamer and was aiming its powerful light-bulb upwards.

"Are you joking?" Ivoran lifted on a life vest. "Nothing. It's just a damned fish is all."

"There! What was that?"

"Get that light into the water."

"It's right beneath us."

Abruptly, one of the rafts shook and the men aboard scrambled to the sides, spilling over into the ocean. Aldin stood frozen when he saw the raft get dragged underwater. Its flickering yellow shape sank and was swallowed by black.

The scene fell to madness once more. With the burning barges lighting the night up, sailors paddled quickly away from the patch of water where the raft went down while their shipmates in the water stroked after them.

A shouting officer in the water was in the middle of yelling something when he was jerked underwater, leaving only his blue hat afloat. Beside him, a reaching cabin boy was yanked underwater, despite his life vest. Damnably enough, no one had a gun at hand. Aldin saw men beating the water with wooden paddles or just splashing it with their hands.

More rafts were getting pulled down. Aldin saw how their centers folded inwards and broke, like some sea beast was biting the raft and dragging it down in its jaws. Perhaps this was exactly what he was seeing.

"Uh," Ivoran stood up and took a step towards the barge. Someone grabbed him, sat him back down and the automatic pulleys dropped the raft down below. Taking their paddles or using bare hands, the men aboard the raft stroked away from the splashing crisis, away from the men in the water and their tormentor. Aldin watched the tip of a chainblade punch through the bottom of their raft. It threw water up in a torrent as it made a long cut through the bottom, then was pulled back under.

Aldin could only stand in tableau and watch sailors scream, paddle and cry for help. No rafts remained afloat. No maritime discipline remained. All anyone could do was grab a sinking barge. There they bunched, like tadpoles. All the while men kept disappearing underwater, never to surface.

"Aldin!" it was Ivoran. He'd swam to the side of the barge and was reaching up. It was a six-meter distance. What did he want Aldin to do? Ivoran suddenly shot underwater. Aldin watched him sink. Ivoran's wide eyes and raised arms grasped vainly for the surface. Aldin lost sight of him seconds later. When Aldin lifted his eyes, he counted a few dozen men remained in the water. The comforting light-beam was floating in the water, it's light was out.

At first, Aldin thought he saw a giant fish or turtle, growing more distinct beneath the ocean. But then when it came bursting from the middle of the massacre, he knew it was a craft. It was long and flat with a propeller. Ugly rivets ran across its chassis in unfinished grids. No sooner had it surfaced when a hatch opened at its top. Filling it was a man wearing the same kind of armour the Bloodlords wore, only it was grey.

Almost at once, the remaining sailors screamed in pain and went silent. Body parts floated off in different directions. More armoured men surfaced, chainblades in hand. Aldin saw something else with them, something in the water. Long slender shapes with spines swimming. They'd go for a dead man and in an explosion of water, the corpse would vanish. Aldin caught a fast glimpse of a scaled head and a mouth full of fangs. Aldin turned about to flee.

Before him stood an armoured giant, black eyes fixed on him. Aldin yelped and shot his musket. The giant didn't even flinch when the ball bounced off. The stranger stepped forward and snatched away Aldin's musket. He lifted off his helmet and looked over the weapon curiously. Aldin noticed how the man didn't have any hair.

"Do all your kind fight with these?" asked the man. Aldin shook his head. "Do you recognize my armour?"

"Are you…you a Bloodlord?" asked Aldin. The man tossed the musket aside and bent in.

"No. Who are the Bloodlords? They wear armour like mine, but perhaps decorated differently?"

"Yes," replied Aldin. "I…no white marks." He pointed to the markings on the stranger. "Please don't kill me."

"I won't if you speak. I promise you I won't harm you if you speak of the Bloodlords to me." Aldin nodded. What did it matter if he was giving information away to someone who might prove hostile to the Bloodlords. As long as those monstrous warrior-kings were taught the lesson they needed.

"They wear red. They worship the gods."

"Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, Tzeench?" the stranger asked.

"Yes. Khorne, god of slaughter. Nurgle, god of desolation. Slaanesh, god of thrill in battle and of pain. Tzeench, god of strategy. The war gods. The ones the Bloodlords make war in the name of."

"Do you know the name World Eater?"

"No."

"Bloodlords," the stranger mused. "Strange." A second giant joined him.

"Incurio demands return. And put your helm on," the second one commanded. "The undertows are diving." The second one nodded at Aldin. "We have all the memories the mission demands. What of the wretch?"

"Kill him and throw him overboard."


	8. In the Service of the Alien

**Nova Vandalia Feeding. Day 1**

**The**_** Nicor **_**– In orbit around an airless world near Nova Vandalia**

"Ork ships are in system," spoke the bridge officer to Astraghar. "They are engaging enemy picket ships. We have achieved total stealth."

"Thank the Emperor. This is a good sign," Astraghar clenched his heavy fists and surveyed his bridge, looking over the heads of the Red Brethren who surrounded his command throne. "Landing status?"

"Our invasion ships have entered the stratosphere. Stealth formation maintained. Iron Band structure located. Aquatic landing zone located. No enemy weapons fire," came an officer's voice from the front of the bridge. "Enemy orbital defenses are identified. Proceeding as planned." Hundreds of brothers bearing down on the enemy without him. The orbital defenses of all Nova Vandalia would burn and him…HIM WAY UP HERE!

Astraghar let the imagined calm of the deep ocean drown his mounting rage. There was still work to be done.

"Incognito status is activated on all communications. Keep our non-vitals powered down and scan at low wavelengths at irregular intervals," Astraghar looked at his data slate. "Send the data we retrieved from Pale Maw to my slate." There was something Leonivich wasn't telling everyone else. Perhaps the normal brethren could see nothing, but the most senior officers all knew the chapter's secrets. Astraghar had to be sure if the story about this helmet was true.

Flickering into existence before his eyes, Astraghar saw a digital representation of the information from the Helmet of the Murdered Raven's machine spirit.

"Red Brethren, ensure that this stolen glimpse does not leave this bridge," Astraghar needed no reply from his Red Brethren. It was the chapter master's word. It would be so.

"Play the last second of the Dropsite Massacre visual record," Astraghar commanded. The data slate responded to his spoken command, showing him the sky of Isstvan.

"Play the next visual record," Astraghar ordered. If his decryptions had worked, Leonivich's pitiful little secret would be out.

The scene changed. Now, Astraghar saw a chamber lit by some infernal, volcanic light. A chaos star forged of brass hung from its ceiling. There were other things too.

"No," cursed Astraghar to himself. He felt his teeth grind. Without thinking, he snapped his data slate in two before he could see more. The Red Brethren turned to their lord in surprise. Astraghar felt a rare moment of embarrassment before his loyal men.

"As you were," he ordered immediately. "I meant nothing by it. And someone seek out a new data slate."

Damn Leonivich for unearthing that helmet. Despite the revelation, Astraghar was less sure what could be waiting on that evil world.

* * *

Nova Vandalia Feeding. Day 1

**Torvopolis – Fortress complex of the Bloodlords **

"As speaking attendant, you shall be the closest person to him when we are besieged."

The skycutter gunship swept over the barrack-city where whole orders of pilgrims lived in the shadow of the terrible masters of Nova Vandalia. It was easy to see the columns of slaves moving into the factories, the unfinished tanks on the assembly yard and the slab-sided bunker houses where the pilgrims lived. By now, even the lowly slaves knew of the orks. The soul-freezing news had spread from the mouth of every crier and deacon to each slum, barrack, fortress and factory on the whole planet. The world would stand in a moment of rare unity against the alien.

"Lord Ixos is second only to Lord Torvogorrix himself. As master of the berzerkers, Ixos will dispose of you if you cannot serve him."

Now the skycutter had soared over the outermost wall of Torvopolis. Severed heads stared down from spikes lining the ramparts. Granite statues of daemons danced or roared in dramatic poses from the most visible points. The watch had been doubled since the news first arrived. Grim sentinels watched the skycutter closely and automated guns swiveled to keep the gunship in their crosshairs.

"You have been given a great honour. You will serve the Dark Gods more wholly than the toughest pilgrim. Do not waste your honour when the orks arrive."

The skycutter was touching down on a landing pad upon the side of the monolithic fortress that was the Torvopolis keep. It was frightening to think how much work had gone into building this monster of stone and iron.

"Serve the Bloodlords well."

"I will serve," Veydra said to the deacon before stepping down the ramp. "Come along," she told to the two Yindrician guards who crouched in the doorway with their muskets. Both of the soft-faced men were conscripts, pushed to arms when the news came. They nodded hesitantly and one gingerly stepped onto the landing pad. The other held Veydra's hand while she stepped off.

About the landing pad stood a dozen pilgrims. Their assault rifles and steel helmets towered over the single-shot jokes that the Yindricians held and the pressed-paper caps that covered their hair.

"I am Veydra of the Yindric Kingdom, loyal servant of the warp," Veydra began, "I have come to serve Lord Ixos…"

"We know who you are, old woman. Orks are near, we haven't time for extra spitting" hissed a pilgrim, stepping forward. Was he the most senior one here? His frightening uniform was hard to tell apart from the others. He looked just as old as the others behind the piece of skull that covered his face from the nose up. He looked accusingly at her through the skull's eye-sockets. "Come with us and be silent." The three were led from the safety of the skycutter into the keep. Veydra noticed at once how the air smelled of smoke although she saw no fires in the vast stone chambers and the wide hallways made for the huge Blooolords to walk through. The reliefs she sometimes saw on the wall showed scenes from the warp.

Gunfire shattered the calm. Both of Veydra's guards dropped. She lifted her empty hands and pressed her wrinkled lips together in alarm. But the shooting did not continue. The pilgrims didn't even look alarmed. Both of the guards were bleeding, but neither spoke or moved.

"At last," a young man in a pilgrim uniform said, emerging from the shadows with a raised autogun. Veydra noticed at once that the man didn't have a top-half of a skull on his face. He shouldered his gun and lifted out a jagged knife. The other pilgrims laughed.

"You finally earn your place boy," said the man who had welcomed Veydra, "take your trophy." The fierce youth knelt down by one of the men he had slain. Everyone on Nova Vandalia knew to avoid a pilgrim who had not earned his skull. The mark every pilgrim wore over his eyes and nose could be taken from anywhere, from anyone.

"Leave him to work." Veydra walked after the group while the victorious man began to saw at a dead head right beneath the nose. With a quick trip to the butcher and a rag soaked in chemical hardener, this man too would have his own bone eye-sockets to look out of.

Veydra knew the Pilgrims would need many warriors. The alien horde was a terrible foe, even to the pilgrims and their terrifying masters. The ghastly rite of passage she had just seen would have to be repeated a thousand times a thousand times across her planet if the if the pilgrims were to be numerous enough. So many would die.

That was the harsh way of the universe that was revealed to every man and woman on Nova Vandalia. The gods taught it was so through the hardships of life. Sometimes though, it would be nice to know some rest from the universe's cruel ways. Perhaps the blessed missiles of the Iron Band would halt the orkish fleet before they could touch down onto her precious, violent world.

She took a deep breath to calm herself as she stood outside her new master's throne room.

* * *

**Nova Vandalia Feeding. Day 2 **

**The Iron Band – Somewhere on Nova Vandalia**

The mission's primary purpose was to take control of the Iron Band's missile silos and use the Iron Band's missiles against the Bloodlords so the orkish invasion would not be blunted as it descended from the Vandalian sky. Tyberos had not been told of the secondary objectives because they did not concern his part of the mission.

The complex was named for its shape. A great iron rib as long as a small mountain range. It was part defensive grid, part munitions factory and part temple to the warp. From the Iron Band, the slaves of the unreal would fire a tremendous stockpile of ship-killing missiles at the ork vessels once the aliens entered orbit.

Space marines would die to save orkish ships.

Tyberos waited with the rest of his squad before the land raider's closed ramp. He had not set eyes on Nova Vandalia. The distant CA-CHUNK of the land raider detaching from the thunderhawk and the splash of it hitting the water was all that told him he was on a planet. He knew but could not see that they were driving through the artery that connected the Iron Band to the artificial lake they had just dropped into. Tyberos imagined the column of Carcharodon tanks driving through a cavernous tunnel, up to their treads in oily filth, crushing grating that blocked their way, plunging deeper into a Vandalian beast of iron and rock. It was a night attack and if the scrambling chaff had worked, the enemy wouldn't know they were here. The enemy would be ignorant to seven hundred Carcharodon warriors in their very midst.

'Bless Captain Incurio and his information, whoever he is,' thought Tyberos. He stiffened as Balor signaled. Tyberos began running forward with the rest of his squad moments before the land raider's assault ramp flopped open.

It was just as Tyberos pictured, if a little more cramped. The land raider was almost wide as the tunnel, which would be pitch dark to a normal man, but Tyberos was no normal man and his armour was not normal armour. He saw everything as if in daylight. There was not much to look at but gray walls and knee-high water. Tyberos flattened himself against a wall and squeezed past the side of a Red Wake land raider to follow Balor and his squad. The tunnel was crowded with brothers but through the schooling Carcharodons, Tyberos could pick out Balor and Aetheus' armour, moving to their objectives. Soon there would not be so many splashing brothers and heavy tanks. The squads and companies headed their own ways, silently splitting up, following the schematics Incurio had provided. The crowd of brothers would grew thin. Balor led his men alongside traveled three other Pale Maw squads through smaller, flooded tunnels branching off from the main one. Qalkip stalked at the head of their strike force, merely turning his head to direct the four sergeants he commanded where to lead their men. Unlike with Leonivich's larger group, now heading to the command centre of the orbital defense network, they had no tanks. There was no way the smallest vehicles in the War Shoal's motor pool could fit in here.

Tyberos noticed Aetheus catch up with him and the two brothers walked by the other. The pair hurried to catch up with Aobwen, Assar and Kiesn. The survivors of Jilab's men, all together, a little private brotherhood under Balor's humble command.

"From today, the Bloodlords will not build their fortresses by lakes," Aobwen remarked over the vox just as the space marines stopped at a metal ladder leading up a shaft, evidently meant for maintenance workers.

"Auspex reads heat signatures. The blast furnaces are nearby. We have reached the first rally point," intoned Qalkip. "Our objective should be close. Alert me to any inconsistencies between our surroundings and the schematics you saw at briefing." Quickly and efficiently, the space marines climbed the ladder without breaking it.

Tyberos was the last marine to reach the top. Qalkip had already sent another squad off to clear a path to the objective. Humans in work coveralls with cut throats lay in dark corners of the massive chamber he was now in. He lost count of how many lay dead as the strike force proceeded to their objective.

A maze of pipes, oily equipment, massive unknown machines and storage tanks crowded everything. Great iron symbols of the warp hung from chains that flopped from the ceiling. Everything looked orange in the hot light that covered everything. Yet this was no factory, not this sector. This mechanical hell was erected to serve the Iron Band's missiles. Pipes and tanks to pump and hold rocket fuel, unknown machines to operate the silos. Tyberos guessed the unlucky workers who were falling prey to Carcharodon stealth were inspecting the works before the missiles were prepared for launch. But who could say how the slaves of the unreal worked their terrible war machine? He stopped pondering such things when the strike force froze at the rounded rock wall at the end of the room. The huge metal hell ended at a wall shaped like the outside of a cylinder. Here was their objective: a missile silo.

"Ready the melta-cutters," Qalkip ordered. From the shadows, the infiltrating squad returned, combat blades covered in gore but no words were exchanged. The other squads were already cutting through the sides of the silo.

"When the silo is open, I want a wide vigil," Balor commanded, heating up his own melta-cutter. He was the man who would crawl into the hole the cutters would make and slice open the missile itself and invade its machine spirit.

"You are sure you know what to find?" asked Teketik.

"Just ensure we have a data connection with Leonivich," Balor replied. Tyberos turned to the servitor the force brought with them. Two brothers who had studied under one of the tech marines were preparing it for its important task.

The hole into the silo was ready in minutes. Balor climbed through the hole with the servitor close behind.

* * *

"Balor is sending the missile activation keys in through now," clicked out techmarine My-Roe. One hundred Carcharodon warriors crouched behind overturned wood tables or by support beams, weapons trained on the one door to the command centre. War preparations had left a skeleton crew watching the missiles. The men of Iron Band had more pressing duties than standing vigil over missiles that were not in range yet. Still, ruined human bodies lay in bloody piles throughout the round, dim command centre. It was not luck but skill that made sure they died without warning anyone.

"Are you inside their command directive?" asked Leonivich. Techmarine Kotsiche and his team were too big to sit in the chairs at the terminals at the walls so they had to lean in. Kotsiche had plunged a mechadendrite through the glass of one of the monitors. Electricity sparked within the ruined screen, linking the senor techmarine's mind with the machine spirit. Leonivich allowed himself to grin when Kotsiche nodded his mute head and gave a spasm. The connection was taxing his brain. If the machine spirits powered down now, Kotsiche would be left an immobile imbecile.

"Now," Leonivich said, "hurry, before they discover the breach." My-Roe led his servitor over to Kotsiche to inserted a mechadendrite into a plug on the servitor's head.

The servitor began to babble nonsense sounds. They were involuntary reactions from the transmission of data from Balor's servitor. It was what Kotsiche was gleaning from the data that was important.

"Kotsiche is receiving the activation keys perfectly," My-Roe reported.

"Kotsiche has control of the command directive for the missile batteries," reported one of the techmarine's apprentices as soon as the servitor went silent. "We should hurry. The heretical code is burning his holy mind." Unbidden, the servitor reached both its hands towards Kotsiche's throat to strangle him. In a flash of a chainsword, My-Roe beheaded the servitor. The heretical code had corrupted it.

"Then we shall hurry. Now, target the Bloodlords' fortresses. Fire the missiles. Make the Bloodlords extinct," Leonivich commanded. After a tense wait, Kotsiche shook his head. Leonivich noted with concern that the marine was trembling. The techmarine was getting tired.

"My lord, Kotsiche cannot. The missiles cannot fire at surface targets and their machine spirits refuse to aim near the Bloodlord strongholds, including Torvopolis," My-Roe blared. Leonivich nodded in grim acceptance. The objective of ending the war now was now unattainable. But they could still do damage.

"Calculate their trajectories and try to get them to run out of fuel and drop down on the Bloodlords," Leonivich said.

"That will take some time," My-Roe stated. Kotsiche was now giving constant spasms. If he could scream, he would be screaming now.

"My lord," Angelo voxed, "auspex reports enemy movement. Iron Band is beginning to notice us." Damnable luck, if such a thing existed. "Azahar reports he is fully engaged. Voraldin is moving to support."

"Move the tanks to aggressive-hold formation," Leonivich ordered.

Kotsiche's team was holding him still as the techmarine began to lose his balance.

"The heretical code is beginning to do permanent damage," observed My-Roe. "Some is coming through my connection with Kotsiche. My bionics are becoming compromised. Soon they may begin to disobey me."

"My lord," Angelo warned, "the auspex is showing me that the enemy knows we are in here. We launch now or not at all."

"We have no options left," Leonivich said. "Fire the missiles into space."

"Kotsiche is initiating your command my lord. Missiles are on their way," My-Roe said. Fire burst from the monitor Kotsiche was connected with. Kotsiche leaned back and thrashed his head from side to side. "I am disconnecting from Kotsiche before I am harmed too," blared My-Roe. He inexplicably amputated his own bionic left hand with his chainsword. The techmarine's metal digits began to grasp at the air when they hit the ground, trying to reach up at My-Roe's face. "I am disconnected. Unfortunately, my bionics were compromised." He crushed the rebel hand under his boot.

"Enemy signatures closing into engagement range," reported Angelo. "They are massing outside the command centre."

Kotsiche clawed and punched at the brothers holding him up. Leonivich sighed and placed a sorry hand on his brother's shoulder. Through the thick command centre walls, the sound of rumbling rocket engines boomed in.

"Forgive me," Leonivich whispered. My-Roe muttered a short prayer to the spirits, not even noticing his blooded stump.

"My lord," said Angelo, looking in at the terminals. "The missiles have launched. They have all launched." Kotsiche stopped moving, frozen in the middle of a final thrashing spasm and went limp. Angelo removed Kotsiche's mechadendrite from the ruined screen and the apprentice techmarines laid their master on the floor. They plunged their blades into the dead techmarine to break up his bionics before the corrupt machines could lash out as My-Roe's hand had. Damned heretics and their evil machines.

"Let this ancient one be the only Carcharodon to die so that ork warriors can live," Leonivich said. Beside him, the sharks were thronged about one of their own, cutting the body to pieces. "Withdraw to the tanks." Leonivich froze when he stepped over to Angelo and read the auspex in his hand.

"Belay that," Leonivich said. "Prepare to repel." He could hear shouted orders in strange Vandalian accents behind the door. Leonivich unslung his bolter and aimed it at the closed entrance. "Prepare to feed, my brothers."

The door flung open and the enemy charged in.


	9. The Necrophage

First it was a dim rumble, then a long rushing roar.

The Carcharodons sheltered behind the machinery in the chamber, clearing the room as it filled with the smoke that billowed in from the hold in the silo. The missile was launching. The sharks did not stay in the smoky depths long.

Qalkip rolled down the sliding metal door, trapping the spreading smoke behind it. The massive machine-infested chamber they were in was no different from the blasphemous works they had just shut out, but the curtain of smoke was gone.

"Brothers, we are summoned to support," Balor spoke over the vox to his squad. "Chaplain Qalkip orders an aggressive advance on Delroc's detachment. We are advancing with Teketik's squad." Obediently, Tyberos moved in beside his sergeant while his squadmates fell in about him forming a sparse but tough bubble at the other squad's flank. Sweeping forward after Qalkip's lead, Tyberos lost sight of most of the other brothers among the pipes and tanks of this iron maze. He did not know where they were but trusted his officers to lead wisely. He was a space marine, a full brother of the Carcharodons. And he still had much learning left.

"Still, steady. Enemy massing on our flanks. They may try to breach the wall," came Qalkip's voice over the vox.

"Rocket brothers, our port flank. Deploy rockets," came the voice of either Teketik or Rhetar. The two sounded so alike. "Enemy armour…"

A hellish crash echoed through the pipes and rockrete. A soft grey fog rolled in from the left. Tyberos lifted his bolt pistol. As ordered, brother Mheor readied his rocket launcher. Feral human yells and the rockfall sound of tractor treads called through the grey haze. As it cleared, bolter and autogun fire crackled through the chamber.

"Rhetar, punish the enemy armour at will. Assar, Tyberos, support," ordered Balor. Running beside the older brother, Tyberos hurried with Mheor towards the din of the fight.

As the grey cleared, Tyberos spotted the messy breach the enemy had blasted in their own wall, which opened up into another vast chamber with little to distinguish it from the warp-worshipping mess he had already trudged through. Advancing across a wide lane through the pipes came a grumbling tank with an unpainted hull. Its details were lost in the explosion that killed it. Mheor coolly loaded another rocket. Rushing through the burning oil the tank left behind came running, wretched humans with autoguns. Some still wore welding masks or work goggles. . Driven by some insane belief, they rushed in and fell, stumbling and bleeding over the bodies of their comrades who fell to the instant reply of Carcharodon bolters. Coming over the vox, more breaches were reported. Six in all.

Tyberos emptied his first clip without realizing it. In the madness of a short-ranged firefight it was not possible to tell if the men he shot at were falling from his bolts or another brother's. No one could honestly claim a kill in this fury.

A second tank exploded as it came up behind the wreck of its twin. Mheor reloaded.

Almost no one.

"Save bolts," Mheor ordered his juniors. Now, two burning tanks filled the breach and the enemy soldiers, if they were indeed soldiers, squeezed and hurt themselves crossing the burning metal corpses. Brothers from other squads who had been shooting back the invaders of this breach fell to other points in the struggle, leaving the three men of Balor's squad to finish the fight. Tyberos holstered his pistol and drew his other sword. Assar tested the motor on his bayonet.

"Carcharodon Astra!" Assar yelled, rushing the unreal-worshippers who were bleeding in. Their rusty autoguns shot slow, weak bullets that did not harm his armoured bulk.

"They cannot hear you brother," remarked Tyberos, his own swords on as he passed Assar and cleaved three men in two. Killing these fools was like killing orks but easier. When their ammunition gave out or when their guns jammed, the heretics lunged at Tyberos and swung their guns at him. He needed no skill to do this. But Tyberos did not let his motions grow careless. Men fell in bloody, bony heaps from chainsword attacks meant to overpower orkish warlords. He killed until none remained.

"Three then," Assar was cleaning a piece of skull from his bayonet, which he had just turned off. Tyberos stood in the middle of a pile of body parts and mutilated autoguns. Such useless little daemons. What a cruel thought to know that humanity had been given such a delicate form.

"The spirits send there are more," Tyberos said, stomping a grasping hand under a ceramite boot. Mheor stepped up to one of the burning tanks. He shook and bloody combat knife with one hand to get rid of some of the gore and slid it away, then took out a krak grenade.

"Balor orders a breach-and-flank," Mheor stated. Behind the three, Aobwen, Aetheus and two others of Balor's squad arrived.

"It is worse at other breaches," Aobwen observed.

"Hence this. Remember brothers, do not go recklessly," Mheor warned. They all leaned back as the grenade went off, blowing open a way through the barrier of dead metal. More grenades were flung into the breach. When they went off, Mheor leaned into the breach with two brothers supporting him.

A flash of blue plasma sent Mheor reeling back. His rocket launcher crashed to the ground and the Carcharodon staggered back, molten metal dripping from the burned hole in his grey armour. The Grin of Nokhang, a coveted marking to wear, boiled and ran from the plasma's heat. Silently, Mheor reached for his bolt pistol and raised it. A single shot went off from it before a second plasma shot caught him in the face.

"Brother Mheor! No!" Assar cried out when the Carcharodon fell.

"He is with the spirits now, the greatest honour of all," Tyberos said through grinding teeth. A volcanic rage built in his hearts. The fanaticism of these heretics would be gusts of wind next to his tempest. He exchanged a look with Aetheus. The other brother nodded and readied his bolter.

"Cover, brothers!" Tyberos shouted without thinking. "We must finish our orders!" He jumped into the breach, ducking down and almost lying down on the floor. A blue streak of plasma flew over his him, scaling the grey off the top of his power plant. Aetheus leaned in after Tyberos.

"I see him," Aetheus reported. His bolter fired a short burst. "Brother Mheor is avenged." Tyberos did not hear him.

The young space marine had leapt in amidst the soldiery he found on the other side. The pilgrims. The army of the Bloodlords. Their professional firing teams melted back from the charging Carcharodon warrior who leapt in amongst them. Twirling attacks from both of Tyberos' chainswords decimated entire squads in seconds. The fierce troopers in their skull masks yelled in alarm to one another and turned their guns on Tyberos. There could easily have been a hundred barrels focused on the lone warrior.

In from the breach came the rest of Tyberos' squadmates, their bolters chewing through the distracted Vandalians. Skulls burst like bubbles. Dumb empty eyes looked in wide-eyed amazement at their own deaths whenever a Carcharodon bolt blew them from their socket. In the middle of the slaughter, Tyberos exploded through the hail of bullets and in long, arching swings of his chainswords, spread human blood across the pipes and the storage tanks of this ugly iron room.

"Tyberos? Are you injured?" asked Aetheus as the squad consolidated. Tyberos stood over a dead pilgrim who did not exist above the belly and below the neck. A wrecked plasma gun lay in his dead clutches.

"I hate them," Tyberos crushed the man's skull to wipe that smirk of his dead lips.

"We would lose brothers…"

"That was not a good death."

"But we killed so many…"

"How many do we have? How many do they? We are so outnumbered we must bring orks to the fight!" Tyberos had a sudden moment of calm. He felt his hatred receed. He was not a child who could yell and rage. He had to remember the Way of the Predator. "I am sorry," Tyberos said. "Forget it brother." And he rejoined his squad, all of them.

"Feed," hissed Balor, stepping from the shadows. "Aetheus, claim Mheor's weapon. You shall be our tank slayer now."

* * *

Where were they now? The flying metal and blood from Tyberos' leaping chainswords had further blurred his orientation. How did he get here?

After crushing the enemy push from its flank, Tyberos' squad rejoined the rest of the strike force. Dripping in the guts from his foe, Qalkip had stepped over a mound of the fallen foe and gestured with his axe at the Vandalians, who had gone from advancing avengers to scurrying vermin. The Carcharodons pursued. Tyberos lashed out when ordered and rejoined his brothers when Balor recalled him. Pilgrims shot from efficient fire positions behind pipes but Tyberos always found them. Yet they never ran once cornered. No fear, no crying and less screaming than most humans would give. In body they were nothing but in spirit they could match the mighty Carcharodons themselves.

'The enemy must not be admired,' Tyberos thought. Again, a poisonous hate smothered his thoughts. 'Not for their stupid, stubborn resistance.' He let his chainsword obliterate the face of a dead pilgrim.

So now here he stood, in the open air. The strike force had pursued the enemy to a courtyard, surrounded by soaring walls that hid the sky everywhere except what was directly overhead. Phalanxes of aircraft stood in neat rows and files. Looking down one row, one could see the front ends of gunships or airplanes, cloned dozens of times with straight neatness that was uncommon to the usual nonsensical organization of the slaves of the unreal. Tyberos inferred this was some kind of landing bay. Here was where their foe had fled to. Tyberos could see the back ends of a few troopers disappear amongst the craft. On the opposite end of the yard, shouting to him from behind rows and rows of vehicles, came the holy triple explosions of short bolter bursts, the whine of chainblades and the automatic clatter of autoguns. Smoke in the air suggested something was burning.

"Rally with Delroc, the captain is on his way," ordered Balor. The strike force advanced after Qalkip's lead. The deployment of plasma weaponry was unexpected, but that possibility had been accounted for in the planning chambers aboard the war shoal ships days ago. The fastest, best shots of the chapter formed now remained in the best places in the Carcharodon wedge, quickly gunning down anyone who appeared. Tyberos saw a pilgrim drop with one of Balor's bolts in his skull. The man's plasma gun fell from his grasp and two troopers abandoned cover to recover it. Neither man took a second step.

At Balor's command, Aetheus blasted apart a parked gunship. Its fuselage was blown back and into the lane behind it. The Carcharodons froze by the gap it made, scattering troopers with bolter fire.

"Delroc arrives," Qalkip voxed. A separate force of the chapter's brethren stepped through the gap, ignoring the burning fuel that licked harmlessly at their ceramite armour. Some of the brothers Tyberos had been led away from in the tunnels down below, back from whatever they were off doing. Their vox network was still closed and Tyberos did not hear the orders their sergeants were giving. Red Wake and Pale Maw brothers integrated in with Qalkip's force. Amidst the midst of the reunion, Delroc and Qalkip exchanged information. Tyberos noted the Pale Maw captain, distinguished only by his armour's tattoos. He did not have time to watch them.

"Lord Pale Maw is nearing from the northern approach," warned Qalkip. "Take a wide defensive stance and do not bunch yourselves. The Bloodlords have been sighted." With no enemy troopers in sight, the squads began to spread out.

Tyberos had a hundred thoughts at once. Though he was ordered to follow his squad, his body obeyed automatically while his thoughts worked on their own. He could still see it: carpets of dead Raven Guard. Space marine legions who were too weak to call themselves brothers, embarking on a stupid self-destructive path out of vanity and humiliating Tyberos' ancestors. Hate them. Punish them. Slay them. Death would be a fine thing, as long as he may have it after playing his own small part in avenging that ancient atrocity. That ancient atrocity, which created the Carcharodons.

Tyberos' squad prepared for the next fight, but it began without them. Gunfire ripped through the air to the north and vox reports confirmed the enemy was advancing. Balor's squad positioned themselves near Teketik's men, whom Qalkip himself had joined. When auspex readings hit enemy contacts coming at them from the other side of a row of rounded bombers, the order to activate bayonets was given.

The enemy came in from beneath the sweeping wings of the bombers, which left wide lanes open for them to rush in beneath. These were not pilgrims, but an unclothed mass, either servitors or men fitted with a cruel amount of mechanical augmentation. All of them had a hammer or industrial cutter replacing one hand and augmetic eyes. Tyberos wasn't used to seeing servitors with legs, so if they were servitors then…

Why did it matter what they were? They should be but meat for his chainswords! Going in with his brothers, Tyberos bowled the foe back and swung hard. Skulls were crushed and metal limbs clanged to the floor. One brother swung his chainbayonet, but had the blade stall when it was gripped and crushed in an augmetic claw. When one of Tyberos' chainswords was itself grabbed in midair by an attacker's claw, Tyberos sawed the fool in two with his other sword and wrenched his weapon free.

Qalkip had no difficulty. No claws could grasp his axe. He fought with power and grace. His cumbersome axe turned into a delicate fan of death, leaving bloody remains in its wide, circling path. A spray of blood dirtied Qalkip's shark emblem on his right shoulder.

Tyberos was hurled to the floor when a storm of missiles scattered down on them. Brothers were tossed to the floor from the blasts. Even Qalkip lost his lethal grace and collapsed on the floor. Shrapnel mauled the heretics badly. Aetheus, who had run out of rockets, was the first one up. A thick las blast impacted against his armour and sent him spinning back into the flaming wreck of a ship that had been gutted by a missile. Tyberos called out to his brother and friend, though his vox was not on and he knew his voice could not reach the world outside his helmet. The Carcharodons rose up and scattered to engage freshly emerging foes. The source of the missiles was not hidden long.

Qalkip stood stubbornly ready while a giant strode in to join the fight. Tyberos stood up and saw he could easily fit under the bomber's wings to hack at the newcomer. But this inhuman horror, this champion of the warp, he had to duck. When he stood at his full height, Tyberos beheld a chalk-skinned monster in malformed, helmetless metal-grey terminator armour. His left and right arms were messes of mismatched guns and cannon. His midsection bristled with holes all from which poked a snub-nosed warhead. Here it was, lorded over these mechanical men like an king over his subjects. My-Roe once spoke of these creatures to Tyberos when he was still a scout a lifetime ago. Although My-Roe had his own name for them, those back in the Imperium proper called them obliterators.

With the melee raging about him, Qalkip rushed the adversary. The obliterator hurled plasma shots at the chaplain, but Qalkip's rosarius forcefield did not fail. More beams of white-hot plasma punched down three of the obliterator's own minions and vaporizing a heroic Carcharodon who came to join the chaplain. While the other space marines scattered further from the obliterator's wrath, Tyberos charged in to replace the fallen one. He cleaved aside the servitor-men who tried to block his path. That living blasphemy to the Emperor and the spirits would fall.

Qalkip swung and carved into the obliterator's heavy arm. Blood and sparks jumped from the gash, but on such a giant the blow was a small scratch. Qalkip had to jump and dodge when the obliterator's huge limbs tried to sweep him down. A missile fired at point blank range from the obliterator's torso whizzed over Qalkip's shoulder and exploded against the ground.

Kill this traitor, this creature. Its very existence confirmed human weakness. This man was equal to, or greater than any brother of Tyberos' and had given it away. For what? Slavery to the powers of the warp? Tyberos didn't care if he was vaporized by plasma or lasers. His chainswords demanded vengeance! Vengeance, for Isstvan.

Tyberos' chainswords cut at the giant's legs. The obliterator flinched when the impacted. Tyberos was behind the thing and it had Qalkip to distract it. But with one easy swing from a mighty fist, Tyberos was hurled back. The obliterator swatted him away. Tyberos landed in a heap and felt gunfire rake his body. His armor clanged under the assault of shells the obliterator hit him with from whatever of its many guns.

'I must end its life,' Tyberos thought. He was now a mess of hate. He could only see one thing. 'End life. Kill it. Obliterate.' The shells stopped and Tyberos swung himself back up. Moving his left leg was harder now but he did not notice. He didn't even notice the bloody hole in his elbow joint. He had to get up and at that obliterator. He did not even feel anything when he saw the obliterator was standing over a motionless Qalkip. The obliterator fired a hail of bolts at a Carcharodon who was taking aim at it. One bolt slammed through the space marine's eyepiece and exploded in his brain. Tyberos did not even know for sure who it was the obliterator had killed. The obliterator would have finished the chaplain had Tyberos not distracted him.

'Let me die if I must,' Tyberos swore, getting ready to charge with his one bad leg. 'But I must kill that monster.' Tyberos felt his left leg freeze and he crumpled to his knees.

A single bolter round hit the obliterator's unarmoured head. The beast was blinded briefly when the bolt blew up, blinding it for a precious moment. Praise the spirits.

Another Carcharodon warrior had joined the fray. Armed with a bolter, he ducked and weaved between the bombers, gun up. The obliterator roared and loosed a salvo of missiles. The brother disappeared behind a bomber. The force of the missiles missed him and he reappeared from behind another bomber to shoot the obliterator again.

Were it not for the planes, the obliterator would target and ruin this son of the chapter as easily has he had killed the others. But over and over, the lone warrior shot but a single bolt and vanished before he could be crushed under the heretic's weight of fire. He did not fire a thirty-round barrage, but thirty single shots and all of them exploded off the obliterator's head.

"ARAGH!" the obliterator's machine-twisted voice hurled. He was saying something, but his mutant vocals butchered his words into curses as incoherent as his shooting. And still the space marine harassed him. Another single bolt hit the obliterator's skull. The giant answered with a storm of shots but they all missed, for the warrior was no longer there.

Tyberos turned to see the avenging brother was behind him now. A power-armoured arm wrapped around his torso.

"Out of the open, brother," said Leonivich to Tyberos as he pulled him behind a bomber. The obliterator turned to them and bellowed, raising its arms. Leonivich fired a careful shot. This time, the bolt did not simply explode against the obliterator's head. Tyberos saw the abomination's head burst like a bubble. Blood and bits of its adamantine skull splashed outwards. The warp champion crashed to the floor, dead from fifty single shots.

"Qalkip?" Tyberos asked.

"He lives," Leonivich assured, gesturing to the chaplain. Sure enough, the stunned chaplain was beginning to stir. "Caught by a blow from the obliterator." Leonivich paused to reload. Only then did Tyberos remember his manners.

"Lord Pale Maw," Tyberos nodded his head. "The spirits have your thanks. Do you wish for…"

"Rejoin your squad. Balor reports brother Aetheus has been injured. You may need to aid his extraction."

"My leg is damaged."

"So it is. I shall have field repair done."

"Spirits thank…"

"Do not thank me. I want you to report to the apothecarion when we return." Tyberos nodded. A dark suspicion fell upon the younger marine's mind. Though aggression was a normal part of his chapter's seed, it never warranted such a visit. Yet there were numerous unhappy tales of the necrophage's approach.

They all began like this.

"I shall do so, my lord Pale Maw."

* * *

The Carcharodons were gone when the bulk of the defenders arrived to clear the great fortress. No living men remained to speak of the tanks that had emerged from the water and none witnessed them slink back into the depths when the killing was through. And across Nova Vandalia, from barrack to shanty to city and to every ear, the rumor spread of unseen killers that showed no mercy.

Yet no attention could go to these phantoms, for a much more visible threat began its descent the very week the Carcharodons drew their first blood. The announcement echoed through the petty kingdoms.

The orks had entered the stratosphere.


	10. The Battle of Shatterstone

**Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 10**

**Torvopolis – At the feet of Lord Ixos**

"My lord, there have been no launches from our orbital batteries. Ork dropships are making planetfall at will all across the eastern territories. Our atmosphere fleets are battling the foe. I am sorry to report that the star fleet is routed. Lord Hades has taken _The_ _Styx _from the system," reported Veydra from her seat at the foot of Ixos' brass throne. She looked up at her master, shrouded in the gloom of the near empty chamber. The ancient hangings lay like forgotten memories amid the heavy shadows on the wall. Ixos was an extension of his throne, some grand unmoving embellishment done up in bold red and embellished with the open-maw device the World Eaters wore. Ixos and Ixos alone kept that symbol in the wake of the Bloodlords' takeover.

"Pilgrim figures?" the great man's tone was steady yet somehow thin. In her short service to the lord of the berzerkers, Veydra had come to think of Ixos as a man always on the verge of screaming yet who never raised his voice, like the only way to keep himself sane was to purge all emotion from his mind and his thoughts, thoughts unknown to all but Ixos himself. Not even Torvogorix dared to break the false calm cast across Ixos' visage to bring forth the gale within.

"Five million prepared full my lord."

"Let this order be known. The Pilgrims are to rally and to not engage. They are my reserves." Ixos clutched his augmetic fist in a power-armoured hand. With the screeching protest of gears and ripping tendons, he ground the augmetic painfully against the stump of his wrist. Old metal met scar tissue and opened it anew. With blood dripping down from his abused augmetics, Ixos opened his eyes.

"The orbital batteries do not fire," he whispered to himself. Veydra had read the fearful report of the mysterious attack on the orbital defenses. Ixos remained silent.

"Not the work of orks, no," Ixos calmly said to no one. "No, not orks. Something else." He ground the augmetic harder.

"My lord?"

"I wish for a summit with my brothers on this matter. I must discuss strategy. Announce the summons. Command also that my two Bloodlord phalanxes slaughter the orks as they will. They deserve a chance." With that, he ended his self-abuse and released his augmetic.

Ixos would not lead them. Ixos could not lead them. No Bloodlord had ever seen Ixos take up a blade alongside his own berzerkers and Bloodlord retinue. No one ever would again. Ixos was the voice and mind of war but he could no longer be the hand that offered blood to Khorne.

Standing up, Ixos reached down from his throne to feel the floor with his rod, forged of iron and topped with the symbol of Khorne.

Ixos the Worldeater, lord of the berzerkers, was blind.

* * *

Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 10

**Shatterstone: headquarters of the Pilgrims on the Vandalian continent of Eastway **

_Follow these coordinates to the city of Shatterstone. You will find your enemies here._

Who were these people? Why did they call their masters the "Bloodlords" and wield armies of men who wore bones on their faces?

AW! Who the zog cares about crap like that? Axebrain was enjoying the sight! Hiding the blue sky were the rusty jagged hulks of his fleet. Ship after monstrous ship polluted the cloudy sky. Grinning, fang-toothed maws or nailed-together rams adorned every prow and fat guns bristled from every surface. From their round bellies dropped a black rain of whizzing, darting landing boats, each hammered together to look like a squig-shark. Big freaking huge masses of these metal sharks would deliver the boys right up to the humies.

Axebrain's own landing boat was beginning its lurching descent from the open hangar of his kroozer. It fell straight down and from his little porthole Axebrain spotted soft dark puffs of humie flak bursting up the air outside. To his delight, one of his landers went up in a blossom of fire. The crowded cabin cheered at the spectacle.

"Good lads!" Axebrain hollered, gesturing at the window with his famous choppa Butcher Teef,named for the diamond-hard chainblade edge the vicious axe had. "The humie boyz ought to be a hard contest! Least they got good dakka down there." The message his command kroozer had been sent was proving true. This part of the planet was infested with humie warriors. He'd followed the coordinates and sure enough…

Those grey fish space marines must've known what Axebrain really liked.

Down with the iron rain came Axebrain's lander. The thump of bursting shells sounded soft inside the cabin. The smoke-tailed meteors that some of his craft were being blown to only made the great warboss happier. He revved Butcher Teef and gave his chest a thump with a meaty green fist, causing armour plates to rustle against his huge form. With the craft pointing downward, some idiot's seat broke off the deck, sending the ork and his seat tumbling down past everyone on a vertical plunge to the front of the craft, 60 meters below. A few orks laughed, but Axebrain just spat. Laughing was for grots. Real orks didn't laugh, or tried not to.

A few more orks tumbled around when the craft did a swooping correction, flying abruptly level. Axebrain peeked out the port.

Broken pathways of glowing shells hurtled from the towers of some great ugly humie edifice that stretched from horizon to horizon way in the distance to the east. The land was totally flat, like it had been beaten flat by its masters. Thick clouds of ork craft plunged down from the thick grey clouds to join an already overwhelming swarm of thousands. Below them, columns of smoke rose from pyres that marked the crash of any craft that got blown up on the trip down. Six here, four there and ten way over there. Ha! The humie shells hadn't even gotten started on thinning out the orkish waves. When there was a quick bright flash to the west, Axebrain nodded in acknowledgement. Far away, his lesser bosses were making their own landing. Axebrain could imagine his fleet's roks flattening humie cities while attack craft swept overhead to slaughter the sky humies. Curse it! If only Axebrain had two bodies he could be here and there and fight in both battles. But stupid Gork and Mork only gave him one.

Sweeping over miserable humie shanties standing in rough rows, the ork craft swarmed on. Shellfire ripped more of them down. A few times, Axebrain glimpsed supersonic flyboyz in their red machines doing corkscrewing moves among the massed horde, or hosing the shanties below with bomms and dakka to get the dozens of hidden gun batteries which were the source of a lot of the flak. But with a second glance and those crazy boyz had flown out of sight.

"Almost at da wall, boyz!" Axebrain could see their target. Tall smokestacks stood in forests behind a big tall wall. Blocky stone buildings that bristled with odd looking spikes and shooty looking dakka crowded behind the wall like a WAAAAGH horde assembled in the field. Parts of the ramparts on the city wall burned. Some of the artillery towers that stuck out of the wall were already smoking like a giant's cigar. Plenty of ork craft made it through the humie dakka that was slicing up the air and had slammed down onto the ramparts. More still flew over to hurl themselves into the city streets. Axebrain had ordered his flyboy to hit the walls. So much to smash and humies by the thousand to guard it all. The grey fish humies were nice to point him here. Maybe Axebrain might not kill them all if he was feeling generous after this was done.

There was no warning to the cabin. The craft came to a bumping, grinding halt. The flyboy behind the wheel of this stupid boat slowed down a touch, found a spot of rampart that looked flat and touched gently down, or as gentle as he could manage. This craft would need a look at by a real good mek before it could fly again.

Aw, whatever. That wasn't worth thinking on. Killing time.

"All together lads!" Axebrain yelled as the pneumatic doors hissed open, letting in the clamor of yelling orks, explosions and gunfire that already engulfed the huge city ramparts. As one, the orks rushed out to join the fray, yelling aloud after their warboss' lead.

"WAAAAAGH!"

Human troops and howling boyz scrummed on the ramparts. The wild drone of ork craft shooting overhead to get to the city drowned out everything but the loudest yells and the gunshots. Whatever coherency these humies (who wore no skulls the way the fish boyz spoke of) was gone and gesturing commanders tried to bring them back together. Axebrain was a little disappointed when he swung his shoota like a club and cracked open the bowl helmet and skull of a humie who tried to charge him. These guys weren't too tough, even if dead orks did litter the ramparts alongside humie dead. They weren't a huge challenge to him and that was all that mattered.

Oh well.

With a yell, Axebrain dove with his boyz in amongst a neat wall of humies who had managed to get into a single rank to hose his boyz with dakka. A single swing of Butcher Teef hurled three of the weak gits screaming into the air and off the wall to the ground way down below. He had to duck to keep his head from being krumped when a low-flying craft shot over the ramparts.

"Watch where you're flying, ya git!" Axebrain yelled in spite before getting stuck in again. He got pissed off, but didn't slow down when a trail of bullets stitched across his armor. He felt warm guts spray across his face when a grenade blew up the ork in front of him. Axebrain coughed back a bit of dust when a cannon shot from one of the rampart's towers detonated next to him. Those cannon were more dead killy than the concealed guns, which slunk among the shanties outside, those grot-holes that weren't even worth protecting with this zog-off wall.

"After me boyz!" Axebrain shouted. He could see by now the ramparts belonged to the orks. The weak humies were quick to abandon them and scurry inside the archways leading into the towers. In the city itself, waves of ork landers were still slamming down. Flyboyz who'd been tailing in the rear were only just coming over the wall to crash-land into Shatterstone. The many-armed silhouettes of his deff dread war machines and masses of boyz threw up dust and smoke, swarming in between the towers and installations that this great tall wall had been built for. Crushing stampedes of boyz were breaking against little pockets of humie defenders, looking to Axebrain like moats of troopers ringed around some symmetrical fighting wagon from this distance and details were as fuzzy as the whole world looked after a few galleons of fungus beer. The boyz down below looked to be having a better time than him, way up here.

Axebrain didn't bother looking to see who joined him. It looked like the boyz were bored with the ramparts now and going at the towers, so it was hard to tell who was going where with everyone in the densely-packed river of boyz was running here and there. Crashing through the thronging boyz, those who didn't get out of the way were pushed down. He heard another gun in the tower ahead of him go off and a handful of boyz to his right were blown high into the air. The base of the tower poked up right from the wall and a rusty iron door tried to bar his way. A few grenades fell from small slits high up on the tower and popped around him when Axebrain carved open the door with a single sparking swing from his axe.

Automatic dakka fire came at him from the opening he'd made. Orks who'd not been killed grunted and died from the human dakka that sprayed out. Axebrain hosed the inside with his shoota then bodyslammed the door, turning the long tear he'd cut into a full on breach. The big door clanged open, making as much noise as a wrestling meganob. Axebrain and a wave of bloodied warriors rampaged into the nice neat line of young troopers who were trying to hold them back. The massacre in the cramped entry chamber was typically orky and when it was done, the mess the humies had been reduced to could've killed them several times. Axebrain knocked Butcher Teef against the wall and watched chunks of dark stuff dislodge and fall from the spiked saw teeth. He grunted and led the way through the tower until he came to the brown iron ladder going up to the gunz way up in the tower.

Axebrain wouldn've climbed right away, but in the grey stone room the ladder was in, there was a wide ramp going down, wide enough to drive Boarhead's biggest battlewagon safely down without knocking off any of the banners atop it. Axebrain peeked at the ladder and imagined the unarmed gun crews that awaited, then peeked at the ramp. He glanced back and saw a wall of stinky ork warriors with more squeezing their way in from behind.

"Up the ladder or down the ramp boyz!" Axebrain called. He turned about and stomped down the ramp, leading a flashflood of hulking green brutes into wherever the zog this dusty, dimly lit stone place led to. Down here, the chaos outside couldn't be heard. He felt like he was running down a corridor of his kroozer…GAH! He'd been on his ship way to freaking long. No more cramped, crowded hallways and grot-piss light fixtures!

The ork leader stomped into a wide torchlit hall that had been fitted with bigger-than-life iron statues of goofy looking animals that kinda looked like those daemon things that sometimes found their way aboard his ship when deep in the warp.

"Khorne. Khorne. Khorne," whispered an assembly of red-hooded humies sitting inside, almost filling the whole place. In a doorway at the opposite end stood a trio of the lord of Nova Vandalia.

These chaos space marines wore armour the colour of a dirty, unoiled gun that had rusted a bit. Their too-big shoulders were a fresh scab colour and bore a symbol that looked like a spiky wheel with eight points in the middle of two crossed spears done in black and grey. Their helmets had lights in their eyelenses that made their wearers look as mad as a warboss that had been insulted. Little horns poked out of their armour in random places but each man woe metal bull's horns on his helmet. Two had boltguns like the fishy boyz, but the middle had an even bigger boltgun. Axebrain let himself grin. This would be worth it.

The Bloodlords let fly before the first ork could roar in aggression. Bolts chewed through the packed ork ranks, killing a dozen at a time. Axebrain felt impacts against his armour and felt a sharp burn in his lip when a bolt exploded against his face. The return from the orks bounced off the three giants. Stray dakka brained chanters here and there but they didn't come here to shoot up guys in hoods!

Axebrain hurtled towards them, taking sweeping blows to cut down waves of Khorne worshippers. He didn't even notice some of the bodies rise back up. Some orks broke ahead of him and were shot down. The boltgun guys paused to reload but that guy with the bigger shoota didn't pause at all. A short but painful string of bolts hit Axebrain. This was getting annoying.

"Killing march!" one of the Bloodlords snarled. The three stepped forward, firing steadily. Four more of the big metal humies fell in behind them, shouting profanities as they killed. Axebrain spat out a tooth after another bolt hit him in the face.

That was it.

"WAAAAGH!" Axebrain sprinted into the hail of bolts. Bits of his armour disintegrated under punishing hits. Putting the momentum of his charge behind it all, Axebrain came at the Bloodlords with a single mad swing from above. His target, the lug with the big shoota took a sprinting leap back, which might've saved him from someone slower. Axebrain overtook his retreat and caught him at the top of the head, right between those pretty little horns.

Butcher Teef groaned and gurgled and sparks made a lovely inferno between the blade and the helmet. The hard blow came to a near stop, but Butcher Teef sunk slowly, oh slowly into that big humie noggin of his. When it reached the mouth grill of the helmet, the slowly sinking axe finally stopped. Axebrain took the motionless Bloodlord by the neck and yanked him off Butcher Teef. Letting go of his kill, the Bloodlord crumpled to the floor.

About him, the others had caught up the humies, who had fallen back to the doorway. With the walls protecting their sides, they slaughtered orks that came up to them with wicked little blades they had sheathed. They were walking back now, with bleeding orks lying in a carpet marking where they had been. By Gork, they could fight! Their hands moved so fast to all the right places. Axebrain had seen much bigger choppas kill less easily than this. The warboss himself rushed forward to have a go, pushing a dying ork out of the way. Butcher Teef parried a whining chainaxe. The ork to Axebrain's left tried to take advantage of the opening, but fell, fixed by a chainsword. Axebrain stepped back, let Butcher Teef roll back to take a cunning underhanded swing at a Bloodlord's chin. This too was deflected.

CRACK!

Axebrain punched the Bloodlord in the face. The shocked chaos warrior staggered back. Axebrain bowled through the hole in the line, with others close behind.

"You have awoken us, ork," the big crazy humie cursed in a sharp tone when orks surrounded his brothers. Axebrain took the Bloodlord by the neck and in a flick of his hand, sent the Bloodlord's chainaxe to the floor, his hand still holding it. Throngs of orks were surrounding each Bloodlord. Hammer blows from crude ork weapons crashed again and again onto them. The warriors of chaos continued their slaughter. Their armour became dented, their joints bled and their eyepieces shattered. The red glow faded. But they kept it up. The first of them fell dead at last when nine brutal chops from a two-handed choppa brought a river of bright gore squirting from his throat, before the tenth one made the man's head roll back and fall to the floor. Each other Bloodlord died in a similarly unsubtle way, leaving a mound of ork bodies around him to mark his death place.

"You lose humie," grunted Axebrain. "Now, top to down or left to right?" He held the blade of Butcher Teef to the chaos marine.

"Kill me. There will be more of us. There will always be more of us. You cannot end the eternal march," hissed the doomed man. "The phalanxes of Torvopolis are on the warpath. Your blood will honour the warp. Every drop of blood…will honour the gods."

"Boss!" an ork behind Axebrain cried in alarm.

"Honour the gods," cackled the warrior. He moved suddenly to break the warboss' grip. Axebrain slammed him into the floor and cut him in two. The fight wasn't over.

Axebrain saw horned daemons leaping about the room, roaring more fearsomely than any squig and cleaving heads off with their big flashy blades. The hooded chanters all lay dead, with telltale ork brutality messing up their flesh. Before his eyes, Axebrain saw a daemon wriggle its way out of an open wound like an orkling from a pod, growing bigger and grasping the sword that burst into existence right by its waiting hand. This was just messed up.

"WAAAAGH!" Axebrain chopped at one of the daemons. He'd fought them before (thanks to some careless shipboard meks) and wasn't surprised when the daemon burst into red flame and was gone as it fell in two. They were skinny but damn they were good with their swords. This nasty gathering was making more of his boyz dead than the Bloodlords!

"You will burn in the warp, ork, as all reality will."

The unearthly voice spoke as though two mouths were on either side of his head. Every ork looked about in puzzlement. A pillar of red flame erupted from the middle of the room and the speaker stepped forth from the inferno, crushing dead humies as he strode forward. This Bloodlord wore a black robe and his nicely horned helmet, curiously, had three eyes. What a nice trophy it could make.

"You are running out of bodies, fool," the newcomer taunted. He lifted a glowing handgun and shot Axebrain in the leg. Axebrain's armour melted and his leg gave way. With a room of dead orks about him and the last remaining daemons engaged with the last remaining orks, Axebrain realized he was spent. Damn these humies and their tricks! No fair, bringing warp daemons out here! Them and their stupid giant overlords trashing up his mobs. Hundreds of boyz, just to pound seven or so big humie Bloodlords to death and mess up a few handfuls of daemons.

"How did you know we were here?" the newcomer demanded.

"Shut it," Axebrain barked. The Bloodlord's hand glowed with darkness. Oh, so a weirdboy.

"I am about to set you alight. If you fear pain, you will speak," the Bloodlord weirdboy whispered. Six daemons remained. The remaining orks were taking off. "I have known about your childish fleet ever since you entered this part of space. You changed courses so suddenly. Why?"

"Sent here by a buncha other humies who dress like you. But less stupid looking horns. More tasty looking fish. That'n skulls."

"Fish, ork?"

"Aye, fish. Wot, yer gods plugging your ears or you can't hear me with dat helmet on?"

"Jest all you want ork. Tell me who."

The weirdboy was bowled over. A great green critter with spikes on its back had pounced on him, leaping further than the fittest bouncing squig. Axebrain growled, lunged back to his feet and let the daemons have it! Butcher Teef made two of the daemons go poof. In the chaos, he heard the Bloodlord weirdboy's energy gun go off. The critter that jumped on him went limp. Though it had been shot in the gut, there was a smoking hole in its spine. A second shot obliterated its face.

"Damn you Imperial bastards," cursed the weirdboy.

"Die traitor."

The weirdboy was fixed through the neck by a jagged lance. His pistol fell and the warrior felt quiet. All the better. Axebrain wouldn't have to listen to his annoying voice anymore. His killer was one of the grey space marine boyz. Where the frick had he come from? He carried a lance and a slugga hung from his side. Two little black fins poked up from his backpack. Behind him, a few more grey marines waited in the shadow, their black eyes fixed on the warboss and their pistols drawn. Each warrior but the marine in the room with Axebrain rode one of the green critters with spines. Whatever they were, they had scales and tails and white markings like the ones the fish marines wore.

"Come at me then," Axebrain dared, spitting. He took a step forward but his leg failed again and he fell to his knees. With a curse, he tried to shoot the marines, but his gun was dry.

"We are here to keep you safe. I represent my lord Incurio, who sent you the location of Shatterstone. We hope you find this place to your liking," the marine spoke.

"Darn right humie!" Axebrain heard a few heavy footfalls behind him. A fresh mob of his boyz had just come in. A growl from Axebrain got them to stop. "Now buzz off! How many of you's is here anyways?"

"I cannot tell you."

"I don't need no help, if that's what you's giving!" Axebrain grunted. He tried to keep up his strength. His war wounds were real bad now. He'd need a dok right quick. "You've done right by me pointing dis place out, but I doesn't like da sight of you's. Bug away before I change me mind about our deal! And hands off me plunder!"

"Like our master promised, the planet is yours."

The marine wiped his lance off on the wall. The Imperial humie stood unguarded before a glut of orks, but no one moved. For a second, Axebrain thought they'd finish him off. He was the warboss of the whole WAAAAGH!

With some unheard signal, the space marines turned away and headed back into the darkness. Behind the doorway. There was a beep and some kind of mine they'd planted went off. The blast burst apart the doorway and a shower of rubble blocked the way after them.

"Hur, prob'ly think they's too good to smash this planet on their lonesome," mused Axebrain. With a start, he looked at his boyz. "Well, you gonna start a farting contest? Go get me a bleeding dok!"


	11. Broken Brothers

**Aka1Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 13**

**Torvopolis – The throne room of Torvogorix**

Veydra wasn't afraid of her rulers but she did not feel totally secure, here at Ixos' side in the midst of the war council, a rather dramatic break from the administrative work Ixos did for the Vandalian warmachine. She didn't think she could read another supply report or troop movement. Silent attendants had just finished distributing some strange dark drink with an intoxicating smell in silver chalices to the four chaos space marine lords.

Carved murals of brutal victories soared on the walls around them. The flickering torchlight revealed sobbing faces, burning towers and crumbling eagles. In heaps at the base of the walls lay human skulls with stories of their deaths etched in black on each forehead. Worthy enemies lay to the left of the room, ignoble traitors lay to the right. Among those to the left were those World Eaters –Ixos' old brothers- who would not accept the Bloodlord takeover of this planet. At the end of the room, flanked by a pair of bull-headed terminators, was the throne of the Bloodlord to whom all bowed. He did not join his underlings at the stone table in the middle of the room, but everyone heard him if he spoke. Though the table had four seats (excluding the stool Veydra crouched on) one was empty.

Compared to Torvogorix, Ixos the World Eater was a diminished shadow. She seldom dared to look in his direction. When she did, she saw a titan of metal with a helmet molded to the image of a juggernaut's face. A deadly sharp chaos star stood on a banner pole that stuck slightly from the back of his grey and red terminator armour. He didn't even have his weapons with him.

"Why must the Pilgrims remain in reserve?" hissed a skull-helmed lord whom Ixos called Odyssar. "Our kingdoms will run out of men before the orks settle in what land they have taken!"

"I see Ixos' logic," said Hades, who sat opposite Ixos. His chair was missing a back to accommodate his blue-feathered wings. "It is a question of logistics. We cannot afford to move them around."

"Is it not obvious where the orks are attacking?" asked Odyssar. "My phalanxes have reaped thousands of kills."

"We will commit the Pilgrims where they are needed. A million warriors will not move to where the attack is at its softest," said the bronze voice that came from the throne. Either Torgogorix's helmet had speakers to project his tone or…

"Yes, my lord," Odyssar bowed his head.

"Ixos, are the supply routes established? Are the world's resources being used efficiently?" asked Hades.

"You can trust I have supply routes and rations addressed. Now my lords and master," Ixos said. "I have made a discovery that may put this orkish outrage into context. I believe a chapter of the Emperor's space marines fights alongside the invaders."

The short silence that followed disappeared under Hades' short chuckle.

"What evidence are you going to show us, fool?" Hades challenged in his characteristic shrill voice. "Do you have a prisoner?"

"I believe these loyalists are the ones who killed Aionas. Sorcerer Aionas was killed with a power blade to the neck, a piercing wound..."

"You blind old fool," Odyssar taunted. "The Imperium is far."

"The ongoing siege of Shatterstone is pitted with unexplained attacks consistent with space marine support actions. Demolished weapon batteries. Blown generators." Ixos was grinding his augmetic into his arm. Did he do that just to hurt himself? Veydra dared not ask. She just scribbled down everything she heard like the obedient servant she wanted to be.

"Do not underestimate the orks," Torvogorix's voice thundered. The lord of Nova Vandalia sounded annoyed. Ixos continued still.

"Twelve hours ago, the Pilgrims intercepted this vox conversation after I instructed them to scan using ancient Astartes-level wavelengths. My servant has the transcript." Veydra scrambled to produce the transcript.

"My lords, the transcript," her voice sounded so frail, so thin next to the vocal iron of her lords. She waved the parchment and opened it. "Father," she read, "the weather has been fine here. How has it been where you are?" She paused to change speakers.

"It has been fine my son. What do you want?"

"The well, father. The well we have dug is deep and wet. Villagers, the villagers, have been swarming around it. With the orks attacking, everyone doesn't know where they will get their next drink. How should we deal with the, as I said father, villagers? It is hard to dig the well deeper."

"The villagers are simply faultless, my son. Wouldn't you hurry to get your mother and I water if there was a well nearby and we were living close to the orks? No, the villagers are simply faultless in wanting some water. Dig when you can but let them drink," Veydra lowered the transcript and prayed that Tzeentch would let fate go to the best outcome for her and her master.

"That is what your blind work has produced when aliens are at our doors? Angron would be ashamed of you," Hades hissed. "You are no brother of mine."

"They're using deep-two, one of the simpler codes the Raven Guard used to use in the days of the Great Crusade," explained Ixos. "In this case, a party in the field, playing the role of a son, speaks to headquarters, playing the father. He said 'villagers' once, sounds to lose his train of thought and says it again. It is not obvious from the transcript. In deep-two, saying something twice in that exact way denotes its literal meaning. Other messages are hidden in the order of words. The end though is the flesh of the exchange. The father says 'are simply faultless.' Headquarters wants the field to carry out order ASF against the villagers that the forces in the field have contacted. Because he says it twice, it makes it an order." The other two lords at the table threw their insults, but they were softer than before.

"You may investigate this," Torvogorix stated. "But you will prepare to move against the orks. We predict the greatest fighting will happen on Eastway. They must be ready to deploy there, or the dark gods will have your blind soul."

"Yes, lord."

* * *

Ixos didn't mind being blind. He could see the figures necessary to logistics all the clearer. They flashed through his personal darkness and remained in his damaged mind. Yes, the militia had enough bullets and guns and shells and cannon. Now he would have to ready the Pilgrims to move. He would give them the fuel they needed and build their supply lines and guard them so these phantom space marines could not break them. He would requisition the fuel, rations and bullets for the picket and position his berzerkers where they needed to be to be able to respond to these loyalists if they surfaced and still spread death among the aliens. What about rations for the militia? Beans or bread? Which would keep them fighting harder? Killing longer? And he would have to readjust recruitment on Eastway. Conscription from all the petty kingdoms in Eastway, yes, that would fight the orks. What would be the most efficient way? He would have to design it in his head. That would adjust the supply figures. The women would need to work hard to make food for the soldiers. He would see to that too. Ixos had a lot of orders to give.

Let those pretender Worldeaters in Bloodlord armour scoff at him behind his back. They needed him. That idiot Torvogorix would let Ixos stay in his inner circle as long as he made running this world easier so Torvogorix and his stripling Bloodlords could spend their time swinging their chainswords without worrying about where the oil they oiled them with came from or who was keeping their rations coming. Not every Worldeater served Khorne with his own muscles.

"They think I am weak because I cannot see," Ixos mused to Veydra once he was back in his personal quarters. "But I am the voice of the army, I am the master of movements and supplies. Hades is a hard commander, but where will he get the fodder for his troops? Who will dig his wells? How will Odyssar refine the ore to make the ammunition for his precious phalanxes? How can Torvogorix spill ork blood if no one delivers fuel to his transports? I kill no one, but I spill more blood than any Bloodlord. You see Veydra? All my work makes the war happen. I am the greatest of Khorne's servants on the planet! When the Pilgrims march, they will because of me!"

Ixos had forgotten that he dismissed Veydra an hour ago.

* * *

Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 29

**The Deep Well – The Carcharodon Secret Base on a deserted island 45 kilometers off Eastway's southern coast**

The Battle of Shatterstone had ended in an ork victory. After touching down on the planet, Axebrain personally led the assault on the city. While more than a dozen minor battles and sieges raged in a rough perimeter around the area, ork forces hammered down in landing craft. The defenders became forced into isolated pockets, little islands keeping their heads above the orkish rain. The humans fought until their ammunition ran out and tales emerged of humans trying to surrender in vain. Hunger dealt the defenders a harsh deathblow. The people here depended on the Bloodlords for their food, Tyberos hadn't seen a single flowering thing since coming here. The Vandalians didn't run out of courage or men or even ammo, but when they got hungry they collapsed. In a last act of spite, it seems the Bloodlords had demolished the city's tallest structures, causing them to tumble down on the street fight below. Yet this only changed the terrain of the urban hellscape. Teams of Vandalian militia hunted greenskin mobs through mountains of debris. The battle did not end, so much as fade away. The orks simply dueled with hidden pockets of resistance that diminished every day until it stopped completely. With the strong point of Shatterstone in their claws and millions of warriors on the ground, the orkish territory on Eastway was now a clearly definable shape. A growing green area on the campaign map that threatened to overwhelm the planet's eastern continent. Already, casualties from violence and the famine brought to this unwelcoming world by a disruption in the Bloodlord's cruel system of food distribution were approaching one million.

'Force people to live on a rocky backwater and they will starve fast,' Tyberos thought. 'The food production facilities the Bloodlords said to have are what give them this planet, more than their guns and terror.' Tyberos still wasn't sure what the food production facilities actually were, but it wasn't his business to know. He had to stay current on the campaign. If reports were to be believed, the orks and the Bloodlord's minions were massing for a contest of strength to win this continent. Not the armies of the petty lords who divided up and quarreled over the barren land the Bloodlords gave them, but the Pilgrims themselves, the men who spoke with the Unreal. The spirits would help Tyberos when it came time to meet them again.

Stroke. Duck. Swing. Swing. Decapitate.

"That is a killing stroke," remarked the Red Wake apothecary who shared the cavern with the two of them. "How do you feel?" Tyberos felt his aggression die down. Knowing now that his sharp rage was a product of the necrophage did not make it more troubling to a man like him.

"I do not feel any of the symptoms you described, apothecary," said Tyberos. "Combat is not causing my veins to break." So many days of testing. As a victim of the necrophage, the apothecarion needed to know exactly how Tyberos was doing.

"Relax then. Brother Aetheus? Is there any pain?"

Aetheus looked back at the apothecary with his eye augmetic and flexed his metal hand. An entire arm, part of his chest and his right eye: all gone, now artificial. Surgery has saved his skull was no replacing what his flesh had lost.

"None anymore," Aetheus replied.

Both men stood bare to the waist, sensors on their bodies to monitor their vitals. The apothecary sat, reading data on his patients through his helmet display. This wide, natural cavern was the only space out of the open air where it was big enough to perform this little sparring contest. In the corner, Leonivich himself was watching, dressed in full battle garb, giving his prayer to the spirits to keep Tyberos safe from the necrophage that had poisoned him.

Tyberos had to calm himself with the relaxation techniques he had been taught. Thinking about his condition had made him angry at necrophage. Too much adrenaline production at this stage of the condition and he might not live to see the end of this campaign.

"You are a fine swordsman," the apothecary noted once the test was finished. Tyberos slipped on his pale robe and drew it across his flesh, hiding the patches of scar tissue he had won in combat. Aetheus needed help jerking his on. He still needed to get used to the unsteady movements of his augmetic. "Pale Maw's only dual-wielding brother who does not stand at position of captain." It looked like the apothecary was doing nothing, but as he talked Tyberos knew his eyes were flicking over test results, measuring Tyberos' adrenaline, noting any keratin decay, evaluating Aetheus' blood pressure and checking up on the connections between Aetheus' dendrites and the augmetic's machine spirit.

"That is my new reputation. In my junior days, I was he who could not hit anything," Tyberos remarked.

"Your adrenaline just spiked. Turn your thoughts from failures."

"Yes, brother." Tyberos drew a soft breath into his great chest.

"The warriors of Red Wake speak of you. My brothers aboard the _Nicor_ tell that you stood against one of our champions in a duel," the apothecary said.

"I lost."

"My brothers all say you fought well."

"Truly?"

"I do not lie, the spirits know this." The apothecary paused, no doubt to concentrate on some important figure his display was showing him. "Yes, the spirits know this. Tyberos, keep your adrenaline up but in control over the next few days. If you wish, I can arrange some sparring with…brother Xhyst is a master of two-swords." The apothecary bowed to Leonivich. "You are in the wrong war shoal, I think," he whispered on his way out.

"What did he say?" Aetheus asked.

"Do not mind it. Now answer my questions brother. The apothecary said this is important," Tyberos noticed from the corner of his eye, an elderly brother in heavily tattooed terminator armour stepped inside and begun to speak with Leonivich. "What was our first combat mission?"

"The bow scorpions." Aetheus' damaged lips pulled upward to form a shadow of a smile that shuddered under the weight of his rebuild skull. "I remember 'Tyberos, support.' You just propped up Jilab's squad."

"Indeed I did," Tyberos stopped himself from laughing. "What was the planet called? What did we call it?" Aetheus' unfinished smile melted.

"I…I am afraid I forget." Aetheus lifted his real hand to the side of his head. "No. That cannot be," he whispered to himself. "I cannot forget these things."

"Name some of our brother chapters," Tyberos challenged.

"I…Black Fin and Red Wake."

"Those are war shoals. Chapters, brotherhoods outside the Carcharodons."

"Chapters? The Raven Guard is one." Aetheus clenched his teeth. "Did I get it wrong? The first time?"

"Yes, I am afraid your injuries have compromised your memory. I will have to make a report to the captain," Tyberos said. Aetheus' eyes fell and his real hand moved to his augmetic one.

"Just ask me about the campaign, Tyberos," Aetheus said. "Memories…things in the past. I have a harder time remembering them than this Nova Vandalia world. Ask me about them...about the campaign."

"How many continents are on Nova Vandalia?"

"Three. Eastway, Westway and Godsland to the north. Eastway is under attack. Command thinks the Bloodlords are focused on Godsland. If I were command, I would focus attacks…"

"Aetheus," Tyberos interrupted. "That is quite enough. But you answered truly." His old friend's heavy, injured features showed hope. "The spirits are kind. Your knowledge of war is apparently unhurt."

"Thank the Emperor. Another one Tyberos."

"Who rules Nova Vandalia?"

"Each continent is cut into pieces the feudal lords war over. The Bloodlords rule over all."

"Good. Why are we waiting here on this island?"

"Astraghar the Red Wake believes the Pilgrims are massing for a push against the territory the orks have conquered on Eastway. We are on standby."

Asking that question made Tyberos' eyes flick to the man Leonivich was speaking with. If he had to guess, that was Hohezax the Black Fin himself.

"What do you think of Black Fin?" asked Tyberos.

"Genetic defects. The worst of the Carcharodons quarantined to one cursed war shoal," Aetheus spat. An interesting answer. Tyberos had been told as much by Pale Maw sergeants and Qalkip but never so bluntly. Never so venomously. "Is that your last question, Tyberos?"

"One more," Tyberos asked. "Didn't you used to call me Tyber?" Aetheus blinked hard and touched the side of his head. He whispered something Tyberos didn't hear and left the cavern without a word more, pausing only to bow to Leonivich. Perhaps he wanted to stand on this island's beach and begin the war to regain his memories in focused solitude. Tyberos knew he had to deliver his report fast. He did not want Aetheus to hear it.

"…if you have any evidence to say I have gone outside of the Lord Red Wake's authority, present it to him yourself. I will stand here and be accused," Leonivich was saying, perhaps thinking Tyberos could not hear his soft, harsh tone. "Now leave before rumors spread of Leonivich the Pale Maw and Hohezax the Black Fin arguing like children."

"My men are confident in my reputation Lord Pale Maw. I wonder how many of your men know what is really on that helmet," Hohezax taunted, glimpsing Tyberos over Leonivich's shoulder.

"You would not dare tell Black Fin the secret of the murdered raven…" Leonivich followed Hohezax's gaze to Tyberos. In an impossible moment, Leonivich let himself be embarrassed by a common battle brother. The heat cooled from his eyes and his tone smoothed over. "Speak to me about this later, Lord Black Fin. Brother Tyberos wishes my attention." With a bow to Leonivich, mighty Hohezax melted into the darkness of the nearest tunnel.

"An ASF was carried out on the settlement nearest our projected landing point on Eastway. Tyberos, spread the word that we will soon make an assault on the Pilgrim buildup. I will make an announcement, but it should not come as a surprise," Leonivich casually stated. "What did apothecary…"

"What is the secret of the murdered raven?" Tyberos interrupted. Leonivich's reaction was hidden behind his helmet. "My lord," Tyberos stuttered, "forgive me, I did not mean to interrupt."

"You are not a neophyte, you are not a scout. Not even a scout would speak to me like that," Leonivich did not yell like Azahar or rain brimstone like Qalkip. Not a moment of energy was lost in futile rage. "When I asked you if you were prepared to live a life within the chapter, you said you could. And so you did and so you thus far have. If your experience with the necrophage is changing your demeanor, you may speak to Qalkip. But do not forget your place."

"Aye, my lord. Forgive me."

"Tyberos." Leonivich's stern gaze resonated out through his lenses. "What is bothering you that you should interrupt me about matters that are none of your business? It is true Hohezax is crude with formality and you may have overheard nonsense. But that is not an excuse that the spirits would bless." Tyberos stayed silent for a moment. Still being scolded like a babe.

Tyberos' adrenaline rose.

Still being reminded of his youth. Jilab repeating "Tyberos, support." Azahar scolding him for paralyzing his whole squad. That Red Wake swordsman beating Tyberos in front of everyone. Leonivich right now…

"He told you that you were dying."

Tyberos nodded.

"The apothecarion concluded my necrophage is in its initial stages," Tyberos said, "a very serious case in its initial stages. Qalkip did not suffer so much until he had made sergeant and the old grey was tickling his skin. I am not even…" Tyberos thought about his proteins even now being melted down in a search for adrenaline. Tyberos tried to calm his mind by imagining he was under the water the way he had been told.

It didn't work.

"Please captain, I can still serve the chapter and your war shoal, our war shoal. The apothecaries gave me three more years before my brain goes."

"Your brain is already starting to give. I can hear it in your voice. Listen to yourself, begging." Leonivich shook his head. "You are good in your role for now young Tyberos, but if your condition begins to compromise your efficiency and makes you a liability you may be retired from the war shoal. The Way of the Predator leaves no room for the incautious."

His words gave Tyberos a moment of thoughtlessness. Without thinking, Tyberos lunged at Leonivich the Pale Maw, his captain and lord. Hot rage gave Tyberos the audacity and strength. Calm action gave Leonivich the leverage.

Tyberos went down in a flurry of fists. He was thrown to the floor, his own momentum carrying him into the ground. When clarity returned to his mind, Tyberos realized in horror what he had committed.

"Striking your commander," Leonivich stood over Tyberos. There was sadness, not anger in his voice. "You are brother Kallidan all over again." His voice grew distant as he remembered a long lost friend.

"Please, I am sorry," Tyberos began to beg.

"You should apologize to the chapter master, not me." Leonivich softened, helping Tyberos up. "I will speak of this to none, but you will speak to our ancestors, who now dwell beside the Emperor, and ask for their forgiveness." He turned to leave. "Perhaps you can find a good death when we meet the enemy on Eastway." And he was gone.

Tyberos stalked over to the wall and punched it. He punched and punched, driving impressions into the stone with his bloodied fists. The apothecaries told Leonivich how bad Tyberos was? Who else knew? Aetheus had been harmed in the mind, but of the two it seemed Tyberos was the one to be pitied.

His adrenaline rose. He did not try to stop it.

Tyberos wasted his wrath, beat the wall and let out a wild cry of blind, frustrated rage.

* * *

The word spread quickly across the island-stronghold. The Pilgrims were moving on the orks. Now was the time for the sharks to strike. Red Wake and Pale Maw, together.

From hidden caves burst jet-driven flights of Carcharodon aircraft. The sun caught the stormcloud coloured chassis of each bird and lit up the curling shark device. The flights spread apart and activated their jamming beacons.

Aboard a storm raven, with his squad, Tyberos stood in full armour with both chainswords at hand.

"Battle will seem different with my changes," remarked Aetheus, now more noticeable in his armour with his metal hand.

"Spirits send your accuracy is still exemplary," Balor remarked from the front of the transport compartment. All eyes turned to Aetheus' missile launcher.

"Aim well brother," Tyberos said.

"You too, Tyber," replied Aetheus.

* * *

In the marshlands, Eastway – 93 kilometers south of the Pilgrim buildup

Despite her own doubts, Ixos was vindicated.

"The sigil looks like a shark, a shark on its side curling in a C shape, jaws open, and white," Veydra described the holo image the spy plane was beaming to her display slate. It was hard to make out from the image and the subsequent destruction of the spy plane in a missile hit ended the image abruptly, but there it was, on the side of that thunderhawk. The chaos marines at their benches just exchanged silent, unknowing looks and went back to their gear. From his place in the land raider's command throne, Ixos clenched his teeth.

"The Space Sharks? Damn them to the warp," Ixos cursed.

"What was that?" asked one of his warriors. "Even when I was still in bondage, I never heard of that chapter."

"Shut yourself up. The chapter of Nokhang the Hopeless has come to Nova Vandalia," Ixos said, half to himself. "How did they know? This cannot be coincidence. Intercept their flight paths and burn them in their transports."

"Who are the Space Sharks?" asked the same warrior. Ixos just grinned.

"Prey."


	12. The Death of Tyberos

**Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 29**

**Eastway – 15 kilometers south of the Pilgrim buildup **

The worker paused by the roadside on her way back to her village. If she didn't get these stones for her warlord's wall back in time, her enforcers might scale back her entire village's food allotment for the week. Food allotments were smaller with the orks out there. If the gods and their avatars, the mighty Bloodlords, truly watched over her tribe, the orks would have been sent to the stars weeks ago and the men could return to the tribe. She felt her hands releasing the wagon's wooden handle and heard it clunk to the dirt path. She looked high into the air at the wondrous flying machines that swooped overhead in a V-shaped flock that was exploding apart.

Amongst them, a sweeping darting shape had ducked down from the clouds. The distant clatter of gunfire yelled down to her from high in the air. Those funny little insect specks high in the air looked similar, but the largest one caught her eyes. Painted in the colours associated with the Bloodlords, it was a long winged machine. Ghostly flickers of pastel coloured the edges of the great flying thing's shape. Looking at it made her dizzy and she lowered her eyes in reverence, lest the gods reach down and pluck her soul from her flesh.

Her eyes suddenly swept eastwards towards her village. From behind the barren mountain range where her home lay, she spotted a hot glow reaching out from behind the rocky summit of those familiar mountains that had stood more permanently over her life than any warlord. She did not get a good look at the V-shaped flight of machines soaring over those mountains.

* * *

High above Eastway…

"Enemy thunderhawk," reported Balor once the pilot had voxed him. "Our squadron is intercepted. Stand by for emergency drop." Tyberos and his squad secured their weapons to them. Outside, the rattle of heretic guns sounded faintly but ominously through the stormraven's hull. This was not part of the plan. The heretics were not supposed to intercept them on the way to the mission point.

"Open the rear hatch," Aetheus said. "I may be able to shoot it down." Assar shook his head.

"No," replied the sergeant. "Brother, do not fall to vanity. We may be defeated here." Tyberos' blood began to hurry. Sensing the necrophage, Tyberos calmed his thoughts and squeezed his chainswords.

The silence of the deeps filled his thoughts. Calm, quiet void to slow his adrenaline.

Tyberos was hurled to the ground. They were spinning and falling. Warning klaxons screamed. He could see daylight through a hole in the wall and smoke was filling the cabin.

"Stand by for impact!" Balor grunted. Tyberos noticed his sergeant's legs were gone. He had been standing next to the wall when that hole was blasted.

"Shoot through the hole, Aethe…" Tyberos' voice froze.

Aetheus was dead. Whatever took the sergeant's legs carried on. Careful augmetic rebuilding was twisted and burning. Skull and flesh, blood and metal. The Carcharodon brother rolled with the turning of the stormraven, like a piece of wretched trash.

Aetheus was dead. Outside, the Bloodlord thunderhawk swept onward through the sky, devouring lives at will. Carcharodons were dying. Brothers were dying. The whole chapter was dying with them. Everyone was dying. Tyberos was dying. Dying! Dying!

Tyberos screamed in defiance of reality. The stormraven banked to one side and bits of Aetheus' skull dripped onto Tyberos' armor. Blood covered his chapter's icon and his precious battle-won tattoos.

"Disengage your chainswords!" ordered Balor. "Get to the escape hatches!" Tyberos didn't notice his sergeant's orders and kept his chainswords yelling with him. Their song of war would be his last prayer before this ignoble death.

* * *

The worker turned her head in alarm when she heard the explosion behind her. Turning with a start, she saw one of the flying machines had crashed. All she cared to notice was the tail section. Amongst the flames, she saw a curling shark symbol, swimming in the inferno.

When the worker arrived at her village, half a day later, she found it the lively community was a steppe of ruined ashes and flame. Victims of a cruel bombing to silence the villagers who had seen the Carcharodons fly past.

* * *

Eastway - The Pigrim muster

They marched by the tens of thousands from horizon to bleak, Vandalian horizon.

The muster crawled across the rocky, rough wasteland that so characterized this ugly planet. Like the pilgrims they were named for, they marched in great masses to the place where they would honour their four gods in passionate battle. Each man represented a murder, worn on his face in the half-mask on his eyes. Tanks with prayer-scrolls sealed to their bulk rolled alongside halftracks that hauled barrels of gas. Long thick infantry companies sang songs about Khorne's victories or hummed a siren song said to have first been heard from Slaanesh's lute. Red-faced preachers rode horses between formations, screaming promises of glory from the warp. Every man's gun, every shell and every barrel, every food ration and every clip had a tiny name stenciled into each.

_Ixos. _

Even if they had the weaponry to strike down aircraft on wing, it was still not enough time to react.

Arrowheads of stormravens and a trio of grey thunderhawks swooped over their heads at terrifying speed. Songs ended and preachers shut their sore, dry mouths. Their deaths had arrived on metal wings.

Smoking missiles swarmed from rounded launchers under short wings, scattering explosions about the column. Tanks disappeared in bursts of smoke. Supply lorries were hurled through the air. Startled troopers died before they could even look upwards. Where moments ago the Pilgrims had been singing, now their vehicles were blazing and smoke from a hundred rogue fires was clouding the whole column.

Pilgrims who survived would later tell of how their hearts had been startled with the suddenness of the assault. The space marines hit with everything they had all at once, turning ordered marching into deafening mayhem. Some of the survivors swore the Carcharodons had leapt out of the open doors of their craft to fall with the rockets. Others swore they saw the silent killers coalesce from the smoke rising out of the wrecks the bombardment had made. The more sensible ones argued the space marine gunships had touched down quickly to let their passengers out to the kill before swooping upwards, though no one could be found who had seen this happen.

Ordered ranks of skull-faced Pilgrims turned to water when, moments after the bombardment's end, the low-flying gunships soared back up and hundreds of unspeaking Carcharodons suddenly were among the mess of man and vehicle. More missiles descended from the sky to assassinate surviving tanks.

The tens of thousands of souls who made up the flesh of the column searched for their superiors to shepherd this devastating ambush into a battle. Tightly packed Pilgrims fired at the huge shadows that darted through the smoke and fire on instinct or threw themselves forwards if they ran out of shots.

Carcharodon brothers were everywhere. Their screaming chainblades threw blood and bone against the charring sides of burning vehicles. Chainblade bayonets disemboweled and decapitated, before rounded bolter snouts exploded the life from their victims. Amongst the confusion, some chaos troopers managed to form into orderly firing lines, but they disintegrated when stormed from behind by three or four black-eyed sharks. Only severed limbs and dismembered torsos remained. Often the nonsensical white patterns on a Carcharodon's armour became the last thing a Pilgrim of Nova Vandalia saw before a messy death came for him. And all the while more tanks burst and more smoke spread. This scene lay across the Eastway landscape like a kilometers-long smear.

Qalkip stood in his section of the column. His voice whispered the same prayer constantly in an unbroken repetition. Striding over mounds of dead men, he sought out those who wore the marks of the warp. Three troopers threw themselves at him, empty lasguns in hand. Three careful swings left them headless. Qalkip saw the preacher he was approaching crouch down, trying to hide behind the piece of tank turret that had bounced over to him. Qalkip saw the eight-pointed star done in iron hanging from a chain around the preacher's old throat. He saw the wide-eyed terror in the old man's heavy eyes. He looked so wise and so trustworthy, but all that was marred by his company and his evil sigil. The preacher tried to say something when Qalkip reached him. A swing of Qalkip's axe demolished the elderly fool.

"Spirits bite him up," Qalkip cursed, wrenching pieces of thick cloth robe out from between the teeth of his axe.

Elsewhere, Azahar was having his savage fun.

Lasbolts broke against his grey armour as the captain hurled himself into the tightest gatherings of heretics. Each axe killed dozens when he got to his targets. Heretic troopers put up stiff, orderly defenses to his sledgehammer attacks. Determined troopers came at Azahar in stiff waves, blades drawn. Lines of men firing as orderly as they could manage amongst this tactical mess tried to down the Carcharodon. Those Azahar did not chop apart like meat were bowled down and trampled. Skulls popped under Azahar's boots. None would deny his blades a chance to honour the Emperor. Even his own brothers had trouble recognizing him. Within minutes of the attack's start, blood had covered Azahar until a dark layer obscured most of his markings. And still Azahar killed, leaving carpets of bodies and whimpering survivors behind him.

The gunships slowed their fire and word was voxed to and fro among the Pilgrims' commanders. The breakneck momentum of the massacre had run its course and now the curse of the Astartes began to imprint itself. For though the Vandalian column was a mess of panic and bodies, the space marines were a few against thousands and now the weight of numbers was being brought to bear and even the humble lasbolt was enough to mar power armour.

The first Carcharodon to die was Kreptad the Thunderhand of Red Wake. The old sergeant swung his powerfist through the side of a heretic's tank, shattering it like a ceramic vase. When he brought it back out, he was caught by a barrage of heavy bolter fire from the top of a nearby truck. His bolt pistol moved to retaliate but a grenade burst at his feet. Then a ring of troopers formed around him, each man shooting at him at once. Though Kreptad got out one more swing from his fist, which crushed a cursing officer like an insect, Kreptad fell.

A second Cacharodon fell, punished to breaking point by the grenades and lasfire that stormed his way. Pilgrims raced over his fallen body after the shark died, trampling on his power armour in their race to find more space marines.

For any other foe, the Pilgrim's retaliation would have been a blunder. Carcharodons were being injured by the weight of gunfire or reckless throws of grenades, but the greater tally in dead were the troopers themselves. Lasbolts meant for a half-seen Carcharodon punched smoking holes in heretic's helmets. Grenades that burst threw Pilgrims into the air or killed others with their shrapnel. One Pilgrim was driven mad and turned his lasgun on his own side, shooting wildly at his comrades until being shot dead by a scowling lieutenant, who was himself killed moments later when a grenade meant for a space marine landed at his feet. But what could these deaths mean? It didn't matter how many Pilgrims died. There would always be more.

The grenade exploded inside the upturned truck, killing the men who had turned it into a makeshift bunker. Smoke and dead men rolled from its underside.

Leonivich lifted another grenade he'd taken from a dead man and tossed it. A minute later, a knot of enemies burst. Fingers hung off maimed hands, held on by bits of bloody skin. It was such a familiar thing.

The response came his way and yet more lasbolts hammered the captain's armour. The roar of his squad's bolters cut into the enemy while Leonivich commanded his men duck back behind the abandoned truck they were using to hinder the storm the Pilgrims could throw at them. Hundreds of brothers were with him and thousands of mortal foes were killed, but it all meant to little. Where were the Bloodlords?

"Protect our skies," Leonivich instructed his gunships in code over the vox channel. He looked down at his feet, where a bloody-faced man was lying, struggling through his pain to reload his lasgun. Leonivich stepped on the man's head, shattering that murderous mask he wore on his face. Chemically hardened bone snapped, along with the man's real face.

"Captain," voxed captain Delroc from another part of the massacre, "the Red Wake has come." So Astraghar and his red brethren had taken to the field? That was the sign. Either the Pilgrims had become too much or the Bloodlords had revealed themselves.

* * *

Pilgrims stepped back in unease when a clear section of the killing field lit up with ethereal light. Either the chaos gods had sent a miracle or…

_Hate _opened fire.

Astraghar swung his assault cannon from side to side, bringing carnage to the heretics. The din of whining chainblades and cracking bolter shots the Carcharodons had brought now had an assault cannon's explosive rainfall to join them. A quick glance told Astraghar this place he had teleported to was in line with his expectations. The Pilgrim throngs were thick here and he hardly had to aim. A nod from his helmet sent his red brethren terminator bodyguard forward. Lightning claws turned mortals into bloody chunks. Astraghar let _Hate _rest as he turned his head northwards to the true foe.

Grey and red rhinos were breaking through the smoke, rolling over men who weren't fast enough to jump aside. Cruel spikes decked with loyalist marine helmets betrayed their side. Overhead, an enemy thunderhawk soared with supernatural maneuverability to engage the storm ravens. The Bloodlords were here.

The thinning Pilgrims kept being killed, dying and falling in moats around the bodies of the handful of Carcharodons they had been able to bring down. Carcharodons no longer had to dodge amongst the smoke of wrecks to avoid a blizzard of lasguns. As the Pilgrims in this area were finished off, the Carcharodons readied to face the Bloodlord elite with the Way of the Predator.

With a howl that Astraghar could hear inside his helmet, the Bloodlords charged, rampaging down open hatches. They stood close together, their once holy weapons in clawed gauntlets, at the ready to kill. Reports from his captains spoke of more enemy transports unloading elsewhere. In a start, Astraghar realized he had been outwitted. The Bloodlords had been waiting for them. There was one thing to do now.

"All forces, fighting withdrawl, scatter and disappear," Astraghar commanded. "_Nicor_, teleport me and by red brethren up at my signal." He did not plan to give it just yet.

"Confirm lord, we are retreating? Now?" Azahar asked.

"I confirm. Fall in to my command captain."

"We can take them." Astraghar felt his blood rising.

"I forbid you from trying. We strike them down another time," Astraghar replied. He swung _Hate _towards the Bloodlords who were marching in. "This is a time of their choosing. We are at a disadvantage." The Bloodlords pressed forwards while the Carcharodons fell back. Bolterfire erupted from all sides of the bloody, burning field. Grey brothers fell. A few rounds punched into the enemy ranks and Astraghar saw a Bloodlord drop. They were so close. Not everyone could withdraw.

"Red Wake, they are behind us."

"We are surrounded my lord." Damning vox reports came in from his brothers, confirming what Astraghar suspected. The Bloodlords did not form a solid ring of bodies, by the rapid deployment of their warriors contested all the escape routes. They would have to shoot their way out.

_Hate _opened fire.

* * *

Azahar ducked behind a wrecked tank. Bloodlord transports were in front of him and behind. Bolterfire ripped into his brothers from all directions. Sharks had enough time to reveal themselves and get off a few shots before being eviscerated by the return fire. In his part of the field alone, Azahar counted twelve dead Carcharodons.

"All at once," Azahar commanded his Pale Maw squads. Bloodlord rhinos lay behind the solid rank of traitor space marines that were shooting into the ruined column. Their muzzle flashes illuminated the red eye lenses of their horned helms like something from a vision of the warp. "Get ready."

The ordered phalanx broke apart when a Carcharodon storm raven swooped low. Traitors moved with fearless competence to give the gunship as little to shoot at. What was a band of men was now a scattered pack of infernal heretics.

Azahar broke cover, leading a charge of twenty. Bolt and grenades hurled at the foe as a rocket from the raven sent a mushroom of fire rising from the engine block of the middle rhino. Traitor bolters cried in response. The distance between the two sides shrank fast and chainblades spoke. As the gunship wheeled away to help elsewhere, Azahar crashed into the Bloodlords.

These were foes worthy of feeding on. Azahar felt like laughing as his axes crashed against a traitor's chainsword. He looked into the three eyelenses on the Bloodlord's helmet and felt his eyes grow a little sore. Azahar pressed his weight against the traitor, bringing his face closer to his foes, trying to bend back his chainsword. He could hear his weapons and the Bloodlord's weapon complain. The spinning teeth had stopped one another. Something had to give way.

"Death to the false Emperor," a gurgling voice hissed from behind that three-eyed helmet. Azahar refused to turn his black eyelenses from his enemy's hideous gaze.

With a loud metallic snap, the traitor's chainsword's teeth cracked off. Azahar's chainaxes whined once more. With a heave, Azahar swung both weapons. The top half of the traitor's sword and his head both dropped to the ground. With a kick, Azahar sent the rest of the traitor to the dirt.

With a casual glance, he searched the melee for victims. Equal numbers from both sides littered the floor. Carcharodon chain bayonets were as lethal as Bloodlord swords. With a burst of quiet rage, Azahar moved to unbalance that sordid score.

With a wide swing, he cut through a Bloodlord's arm, sending a hand clutching a power sword to the bloody earth. His backswing opened the traitor's stomach. The Bloodlord tried to turn his bolter at Azahar, but that weapon too fell to the ground, a hand clasping its grip. Two furious downward swings beat the life from the Bloodlord's body. Blood sprayed against Azahar's armour and the Bloodlord went down.

In a short time, the melee was over. More Carcharodon squads were emerging from the fire behind him and rushing through the gap that had been torn in the enemy line. Catching his breath, Azahar saw no living Bloodlords remained.

Here.

"Go brothers, I will catch up," Azahar vowed. To the void with Red Wake's cowardly order. They had come here to murder Bloodlords and here the Bloodlords were.

Azahar charged against the stream of brothers emerging from the flames. A few heads turned to watch the Pale Maw captain head back into the inferno.

* * *

Torvogorix's command post

The command bunker was quiet. The master of the Bloodlords wanted no mortal voices invading his thoughts, which were now ablaze with irritation.

"Where is the artillery I was promised? Why are the space marines not being decimated as planned?" growled the voice from behind the daemonic helm. The Vandalian officer looked down at the data slate he was carrying.

"The Pilgrim artillery batteries are in position and have been ordered to open fire as instructed," the officer's little voice said.

"And they hold their fury back?" Torvogorix snarled.

"My lord, we voxed them and they replied that they were in position," the puny officer removed his cap to wipe sweat from his brow. Torvogorix could see the words on the man's data slate.

"A twenty minute vox blackout with the artillery an hour ago? Why was I not told?" asked Torvogorix.

"Surely your magnificence cannot be bothered. We have had six blackouts…"

The jaws of Torvogorix's helmet bent open and a wave of warp-tainted flame engulfed the officer. His screams were over quickly and in moments, Torvogorix was stepping over a mound of ashes.

"Is Slaughterfeast ready for the fight?" Torvogorix spoke aloud. A voice inside his helmet replied.

"_Yes. Lord._"

"Summon my guard and prepare the teleporters," growled the lord of chaos. It was time to take to the field.

* * *

The Killing Fields

Astraghar beat the Bloodlord to the mud and loosed a short volley into the monster's power armour. Wherever the Red Wake moved, the forces of the Unreal fled. Yet he was one man and reports of whole squads being mauled came in. Worse, reports of the Pilgrims regrouping had reached him and he was having trouble coordinating the retreat with Hohezax and Leonivich.

"Red Wake," reported Hohezax over the vox, "my warriors are withdrawn. The riders have not reported back."

"If the guns were still speaking we would know," Astraghar dismissed the Lord Black Fin and tried again to contact Leonivich. No luck.

A brother of the Red Brethren fell to the floor: a glowing hole in his terminator armour. Astraghar turned with his squad to confront the attacker. Yet another squad of heretics had driven into the fight and was now unloading from their defiled rhino. As one, the elite terminators rushed the corrupt astartes, bolts exploding off storm shields. He valuted over a pile of dead and plunged the teeth of _Hunger _into the neckpiece of a Bloodlord warrior. The traitor stepped back and drew his chainsword, a river of blood dribbling from his sundered armour.

"Gorge on death!" Astraghar cried while his warriors and the smaller heretics began their duel of attrition. This would be simple.

From the corner of his eye, Astraghar spotted a flash of reddish light amidst the smoke, glowing menacingly against the soot-coloured backdrop. In the heat of the madness, Astraghar did not notice it completely. As he slammed his opponent to the floor, he caught the sight of a monstrous shape stride from the smoke and knew at once the lord of the Unreal had stepped forth to challenge him.

"Keep you retreat," Astraghar commanded over the vox to any still engaged in the killing around him, "I have this one." Smoke surrounded him on all sides, but he knew his brothers were there. And if it was time for this Red Wake to fall, let his replacement be among them.

Like a bloody image of himself, the lord of the Bloodlords stood in terminator armour, surrounded by his guards. His helmet was like the head of a metal daemon and a long polearm whined in his fist. Eye-aching sigils scratched in blood glowed from his evil armour. No vestige of a fallen hero stood in the man before Astraghar. This was a daemon-man that could never have been a warrior of the Emperor.

"Know that I am Torvogorix," spoke the heretic in a voice made of iron. "Scream that name to the winds of chaos when your soul is in hell."

Without a further word, Astraghar and the heretic lord leapt at one another. Astraghar's wide, unsubtle weapon slammed into the haft of Torvogorix's spear. The two lords remained focused on one another while their guards spilled one another's blood in a dance of gore about them. Ceramite shattered and giants fell, but neither master turned from the duel. Spear met fist and fist met spear. Claws scratched Torvogorx's armour and teeth chipped Astraghar's plate. Shark against daemon. Monster against devil.

Astraghar tried again and again to swing _Hate _at his foe, but the long barrel never had enough room in these close confines. If he had two fists, snapping Torvogorix's spear would be as easy as bending a twig. One hand was not enough to overcome this monster of a man.

"Slow, pathetic and weak," Torvogorix taunted, "your captain is my prisoner. Bow down to the warp or die." When Astraghar said nothing, the jaws of the heretic's helmet opened. Crying out in alarm and rage, Astraghar stepped back when he was engulfed in Torvogorix's breathed flames. Flames consumed his body. Through the pain he saw the tip of _Hate _melt like butter in a fire. Drops of molten metal fell to the bloody dirt to join the bodies of the terminators who now decorated the field of death.

"Teleport," Astraghar commanded. He and the surviving Red Brethren began to shine with an ethereal light while the _Nicor _got their bearings.

"No," snarled Torvogorix, "coward." With a hard, furious gesture, Torvogorix stabbed a surviving Red Brethren terminator through the chest. "Remember his death," taunted Torvogorix as Astraghar faded, "we will finish this."

* * *

The Battle of Eastway Prime was a Carcharodon defeat. Between the legions of Pilgrims and the Bloodlords, the equal of two companies of sharks were killed. Entire squads lost and vehicles broken. Among the list of casualties, the chapter confirmed Tyberos of Pale Maw as killed with the rest of his squad. A recon sweep of the storm raven's wreck found nothing but dead Carcharodons and a burnt corpse of a machine. A few of the dead had been looted. Brother Aetheus' had been beheaded, his skull no doubt taken to festoon a Bloodlord's trophy rack. Amidst those lost, two were blows to the chapter's leadership…

* * *

Leonivich was barely conscious as he was carried from the field, his arms held by his Bloodlord captors. Here was his reward for trying to help his chapter master. He had been beaten to the floor by a Bloodlord terminator and was now a hostage.

Before he passed out, he saw Azahar, also being dragged along the ground.

Two astartes captains captured by the enemy.


	13. The Three Captains

"ASF stands for 'area-sanitation feeding.' It is the Space Shark term for genocide. These men are daemons."

-_Sergeant Martel of the Fire Angels_

* * *

Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 30

**Messtr's Fall – Eastway, a day from the remnants of the Pilgrim buildup.**

The soldier rode in to the town of Messtr's Fall, in Messtrat territory. He climbed off his motorbike and collapsed. Townsfolk ran out from nearby dwellings to help.

"Ma! Open the door!" The villagers tossed the warehouse door open and three strong workers carried the bloodied soldier in. Young hands cleared a section of the ground of tools and the man was laid down. Through the scrum of helpful townsfolk, one could see the soldier's tan Vandalian army uniform was brutally dark around his left hip where something had torn it. No one recognized the arrow crest on his shoulder as identifying him as a member of the local king's artillery corps. One mother hid her young daughter's eyes when she craned in to have a look.

"Summon the enforcer. The king's huscarls will want to know of this," said an old townsperson through the confusion of voices.

"Is it orks?"

"The king's army and the Bloodlord Pilgrims are nearby if it is. Would someone summon the herbalist?"

"What happened?" asked an elderly woman, kneeling by the wounded soldier and whispering warmly to him. "What…"

"Giants," the Vandalian soldier sputtered, "giants riding daemons. Water please." As people hurried to search the dwellings for a water jug, he continued. "All dead…but me." Everyone in the room thought about giant orks. It was fine for these villagers to think such a thing. These villagers were faultless. They were simply faultless.

"Where did the giants go?" the woman asked.

* * *

Torvopolis

He had not felt this way since the day he first saw a living Carcharodon. Later, he learned the man's name had been Horst of Pale Maw, but Azahar knew the man as an unprovoked killer who had slaughtered his family on his farm. Even after becoming a brother, Azahar never quite forgot Horst.

"Wake up." The voice sang through Azahar's unconscious thoughts.

The fifth time he heard those words, Azahar came to. His eyes focused on the world he had been dragged to. He saw the walls of the chamber he was in were made of thick blocks of masonry and primitive flame torches gave the room an orange light. The air smelled strongly of the iron tang of fresh blood. He could feel his body was out of its power armour and held fast by some binding that covered his whole astartes frame. Let the traitors look upon his scars if they wanted to see him helpless and naked. Let them know he had been through more than this captivity.

"Wake up," said the voice once more. Azahar took a moment to notice his frame was encased in a great metal box, propped upright to let him stand straight. Though it was of a different design than the ones he knew, Azahar recognized he was in a dreadnought sarcophagus, albeit one stripped down it its base frame. He could feel pipes against his skin and needles meant to inject nutrients into him lay in sharp patterns against him. Iron bars held him steady, but if he looked down he could see none of this except a thick adamantine case. Azahar was relieved that his head was free. He quickly became aware of a raw meaty taste in his mouth. When he felt a swollen slit cut into his gums he realized someone had cut out his Betcher's gland.

"Wake up," said a Bloodlord, who stood alongside Azahar's prison.

"I am awake, are you blind?" Azahar cursed. He could not even twitch a finger. His captors did not intend to honour him with a dreadnought walker; this improvised prison was the most reliable way to restrain him. "Where is this?"

"Torvopolis," replied the helmetless Bloodlord, tapping the wall with an iron prod. "And yes, I am blind. You may call be Ixos."

"Your colours are different."

"I am a direct descendant of Angron," replied the lord of fools. A blind space marine? Who ever knew such a thing? "Tell me your name, shark."

"Azahar of Pale Maw," Azahar grinned. "You will get nothing from me."

"I intended nothing of the sort, brother," Ixos replied. "The abyss is a difficult trial, I am sure you agree. There are times when I feel my mind leaving me," he pointed to his blind eyes. "Once, I fought alongside a crusade of Khorne when I could still see. My World Eater brothers gave the blood god such a feast that day." Ixos sounded ecstatic and Azahar noticed he was grinding his augmetic hand against his flesh in some self-destructive search for sensation in his personal darkness.

"As my followers and I threw down Slaanesh's idols, a daemon lord of peacocks cursed me. He could have taken my strength, but he instead took my eyes," Ixos chuckled at some private joke, or perhaps in sheer bitterness. "So your Carcharodons were defeated by a blind man. Truth be, I have your plan figured, captain Azahar. How un-Imperial to utilize xenos."

* * *

Messtr's Fall

The tired soldier opened his heavy eyelids and noticed he could no longer see the rafters. He must have passed out. There were no townsfolk in here with him when a moment ago, in the daytime, there had been many. Now the night's shadows came in through the small windows. Fighting against the darkness, his eyes struggled to make out long shapes in the shadows while the dazed man sat up.

"Hello?" he called. His left leg gave a jabbing shot of pain with every left step he took. He took a painful walk to the door and pushed it open with his gloved fingers. The door opened a shot way, but thudded to a stop on some barrier.

"Hello?" the confused artilleryman limped sideways outside through the crack the door had made. It was cold outside and the shadows of cottages loomed around him, hiding a strip of stars with their chimneys. Illuminated eyes of windows looked on at him from those shapes. When he took a quick glance at the door to see what was holding it half-shut he saw a tangle of a bloody white blouse in a spot of square light from a nearby window. His eyes strained and he felt faint when he could see human-shaped mounds in the space around the light. Men and women, lying in a heap, holding the door half-closed.

A pale-faced youth stepped suddenly into the dim light. The artilleryman made out a thin scalp of black, oily hair and a teenaged face, gaunt with the weight of hunger that all the subjects of the Bloodlords had to live with. He stood there, silhouetted against the window of a house that could have been his. Somehow this boy had escaped the king's conscription squads. His eyes were wide and empty.

Before either could get a word out, the boy shuddered and winced in pain. The tip of a steel lance poked an oozing hole in his chest. Skewered on the lance, the boy was pulled back into the darkness. Behind him, the artillery officer heard a deep, wet, inhuman hiss. It was the voice of one of those things the giants rode on, those daemons that looked more like a phantasm from an old sailor's nightmare than a creature of blood and scales.

* * *

Torvopolis

"I find orks are a useful tool. This would not be the first occasion that my chapter has used orks to slay mankind's enemies," Azahar fired back, "kill me you blind bastard. I am nothing to you now."

"You are more than you think. My warriors tell me of your ferocity." Ixos' voice drifted. "You know, I was at the Dropsite Massacre…that is what it is called still, yes? My squad and I hounded your primarch as he dragged his remaining sons from Isstvan. I killed your ancestors by the dozen. Most of my World Eater brothers…and they are still World Eaters despite Torvogorix…were with me there."

"Watch your words, I was there too," growled a sudden, strange voice.

"Wait your turn," Ixos replied. Azahar could not see anyone else in here with him, but he could not turn his head far. He let the mystery stand.

"How petty, trying to hurt my feelings now?" Azahar laughed. "How do you know so much about the Carcharodons?"

"I have said I was there at Isstvan and I have witnessed history with my own eyes," Ixos grinned like an idiot at the irony. "Ah, I have heard of your fury on the battlefield Azahar. You may not imagine it, but you would have made a good World Eater, even in the legion days." Ixos laughed bitterly. "I apologize but I have opened an old scar." Azahar curled his eyebrows in confusion. "The legion days," Ixos whispered, grinding his augmetic hard against his flesh, "you should have been there at Terra, Azahar, even as an enemy. You would have killed so many. On our side you could have helped us win." Azahar remained silent as Ixos continued his mad tangent.

"So many killed," Ixos hissed, his voice heating up. "So so many. I killed eight hundred. We had them. We had them! We had them!" Ixos was yelling now and he wasn't facing Azahar anymore. "We had them and we would have won if you had not abandoned us! If you had not abandoned us at the gates of Terra we would have won! You all should have been honoured at his glorious death! Why did you give up and run away! All of you!" Blood fell from Ixos' stump. Azahar could hear tendons snap. "You know Azahar, I always felt we deserved what we got on Skalanthrax. Some punishment from Khorne for Terra. If that idiot had not burned down all those…" Ixos stopped abruptly.

"What are you talking about?" Azahar asked. This man was the mastermind of the Bloodlord's order of battle? He was a nonsensical husk of a man.

"Explain something to me, how is it you still fight for the Emperor?" Ixos said when he began to speak again.

"We know duty where you do not," Azahar stated.

"I am told of how you skulk outside the Emperor's borders."

"We do not need to be among them to guard the Emperor's people. Do you not think I have pondered this before? We are entrusted with a duty that we must perform alone. We are predators, always at your back, killers, so regular men need not be." Azahar spat pink saliva. "You would not understand, fool. What will you say now? Are you preparing to vomit out another tired war story of better days or are you bored with hearing me talk?"

"Hearing you? No, my brother, your words on Carcharodon ethic were not for me," Ixos replied.

There was a dark laugh that bounced from wall to wall. Azahar looked at Ixos, but then realized it had come from behind him. He tried to look, but could not see without snapping his neck.

"Have you heard enough?" Ixos asked.

"No. I will never have enough of this," cackled the deep, dry voice. "Let the shark talk more. It amuses me."

"I am no 'it' heretic," replied Azahar. "What are you?"

"He too lies in a tomb like the one you are in, but he is an honoured member of the warband," Ixos said with a snicker.

"Honour? What honour is this?" the voice asked.

"Forgive me then. He is a fighting slave," Ixos said with a sly grin. "We call him Slaughterfeast. His dreadnought form has been fighting for us since long before you were corralled to the false Emperor." Azahar did not give the dark one the satisfaction of outrage. The sharp feeling of contempt had to sit inside him, blunting under astartes discipline.

"Slaughterfeast?" Azahar asked, rolling the name out slowly as if saying it for the first time. "How is your servitude? Do they store you down here much?"

"Die screaming, fish," hissed Slaughterfeast.

"Fish?" Azahar laughed, "that is a new insult. I should remember it."

"Lord Torvogorix knows the ways of pain well. You will envy me when your torture is begun," Slaughterfeast replied. "Look at your fate. This is your reward for fighting in the false Emperor's name. All for a man you do not know and his empire that you have never seen. You think the Emperor's people appreciate you being monsters on their behalf?"

"For mankind, duty is its own reward," Azahar answered, "but what about you? You could have led your men in glory. Instead you threw it all away for a lifetime of disgrace and now you rot inside your grave."

"Do you think your Carcharodons are what the Emperor would want? Think of that as you skulk beyond the Imperium. How can you still think the Imperium appreciates you. Would they still recognize you if you went back?" Slaughterfeast snarled from his own prison. Such a deep, strong voice despite being inside a metal coffin that wasn't attached to anything. "You hide from them because you are monsters."

"Perhaps we are. But to strike down monsters, a man might need monsters of his own," Azahar replied. Ixos found that funny.

"Reminds me of myself," Ixos muttered.

"And what about you?" Azahar demanded, "do you hate monsters, mighty Slaughterfest, pet killer of Nova Vandalia?"

"I hate dishonesty," replied Slaughterfeast.

"You were the most dishonest of all," Azahar answered.

"Am I? Is it coincidence your chapter is here or am I so dangerous that you brought all your strength down on Nova Vandaia just to kill me?" Slaughterfeast asked.

"To kill the Bloodlords and you. My brother captains all sort through this planet to find your life, which you threw to the daemons," Azahar answered. "I have to know, do you really think you are one of them? One of the daemons? If you are not hiding from the warp gods you are trying to appease them. You and Ixos call me weak but it is you who are the impotent ones." Azahar laughed in contempt. "The daemons of chaos are not gods and not masters. Not some fundamental master of everything. Daemons are xenos, just like orks." Azahar spat again. "And you worship them? To them, you are a key to get into the galaxy. When they have come though and won, they will throw you away. Like an empty cartridge…"

"And you!" roared Slaughterfeast, "you loyalist! Your chapter spends its entire lifetime lying to itself! Does anyone in the Carcharodons know the truth about their founding? You were not specially entrusted to hunt in the void as the Emperor's monsters! You were banished, cast out, like a heretic." Azahar just kept bitterly grinning. "I thought I could teach the chapter to be proud. I tried to teach them the codex and Corax's ways of war so that you could return as a tame order of honourable knights. I taught you to love the Imperium and you did. But you never fought with dignity, always off to your mad cruelty. I left my chapter to save you and how was I rewarded? I became a shepherd of a flock of soulless cannibals."

"You were undone by your own failure, I see now," Azahar said with sad resignation, "I did not think it was that simple when I heard about your fall."

"You became as bad as Horus," Slaughterfeast spoke that name with particular venom. "I am not one of you. I was never one of you. If my name is anywhere in your annals, I want it gone!"

"That will not be so. We have a ship named after you." That did not anger Slaughterfeast the way Azahar wanted.

"You are the bastard offspring of a failed experiment and a mountain of wasted honour. So hide your face in the darkness to keep hidden what freaks you have become!"

"I have one question," Azahar said without leaving room for silence. "You spent so much time trying to save our souls. Why did you go to chaos?"

"I knew you had to be destroyed. To erase you snarling, slavering beasts. You would not even accept the name I gave you; the Knights of Deliverance. Instead you called yourselves the simpleton name you now have, Carcharodons, like you revel in being animals. When the Imperium did not help, I abandoned you and contacted the traitor legions when you tried to have me killed, for trying to take the chapter along a different route than the one those killers around me wanted. I thought they could erase my mistakes when the Imperium did not." Azahar nodded, not knowing if this was a lie or not.

"Thank you, I have always wished to say that to you, despite your failure," Azahar replied. "You failed, but you forged the first generation. You may not have taught us to behave like knights, but you taught us to be loyal to the Emperor. That is why the chapter will always honour the name of Nokhang. Even after we kill you."

"Ever the righteous brute," Ixos taunted as he turned to leave. "You will serve Khorne one day."

* * *

He was lying on his back.

The artilleryman did not know if he had died and been condemned to this hell he now lay in and the giant standing over him was the lord of suffering.

Around him, houses burned. Objects that were the remnants of stolen commoner lives huddled, burning in the inferno. Dead bodies of the townsfolk littered the street, heaped like firewood. Men, women, children, officials and peasants, all ravaged to death. The sheer mass of death assured the artilleryman that not one villager could have been overlooked in this meaningless pillage.

The power-armoured giants stood in silhouette around him. The fire's flickering light showed the artilleryman an odd glimpse of a white shark or a rippling wave or a spiral or another abstract symbol that meant Tzeench-knows-what. The voices of their freakish mounts snarled in the background as they gorged back the dead.

The leader of the killer shark-giants stood right by the artilleryman. It had been he who led the mounted giants from the fog to ambush the artillery column in its bloody route. The soldier never got a good look at him, spotting only a flashing barbed trident and a white mask with black eyes. Lying on his back, the artilleryman now saw the lord of butchery in his whole, albeit from the bloody ground at his feet. The wound in his side was too terrible to let him stand. The brave Vandalian would die here.

At the top of the lead giant's head, the dying man saw glistening fangs chewing at a piece of meat that wore a boot. Now and then, the light caught the giant's black eyes to make them shine like oil. His other features could only be guessed at.

The black-eyed daemon handed his meal down to a large shadow behind him. A reptilian snarl was heard and a pair of heavy jaws crunched the meat from his fingers.

"Riders, head out in six," called the lord of the giants to his kinsmen around him. "Reports tell of eight settlements east. We are not done the sanitation here." Then he locked his black gaze with the artilleryman's own. The artilleryman saw the barbed trident in the killer's other hand.

The artilleryman closed his eyes and tried not to think of the piece of meat the giant had been eating.

* * *

They'd taken his prized bolter, his combat knife and his helmet, but the Bloodlords did not know all of the Carcharodon captain's tricks. Indeed, they did not seem to even know he was a captain by his lack of badges of office. When Torvogorix had separated Azahar from the group of captured marines, he seemed to think Azahar was the only officer. The heretic had even taken time to taunt the other prisoners about their captain's supposed fate as a servant of Khorne while they would be sacrificed.

"On the eighty-eighth day!" laughed Torvogorix to the eight captive Carcharodons. He said this over a giant iron table shaped like the eight-pointed star of chaos, with room at each point for a victim to be fastened down.

Leonivich considered his coming fate as he suffered another blow across the cheek by the brutish terminator who had captured him.

The place he had been taken was some unholy monastery on a mountainside, looming high over the desolate Vandalian landscape. Inside the monastary's dungeons, the other seven captive Carcharodons languished. This brute had taken Leonivich (binding his hands and feet with chains first) to take out his hate on the loyalist before chaining him with his brothers in the abyssal bowels of that unholy place. This was Leonivich's only chance to escape, alone on a flat spot of ground on this sweeping mountainside, and with no helmet before a bellowing terminator in full wargear.

Flopping to the ground once more, Leonivich rolled to the edge of a long drop. He rolled his hands backwards to the soles of his feet, not letting the chaos warrior see his fingers. Standing over him, the Bloodlord elite threw another insult from behind his helmet. The fool did not even know he was dealing with a space marine captain.

"There will be no salvation for you, no meaning to your miserable death! Only your bloodied captain will remember you as he bows to Torvogorix," cackled the fiend from behind his helmet. From the monster's spiked trophy rack, Leonivich's own helmet looked at him, among a gallery of other faces, other helmets from other chapters and skulls, the skulls of this man's many victims. Leonivich would not be remembered as a traitor's trophy.

The Carcharodon coughed as the daemon-man stomped a terminator-armoured foot on his stomach. He took blow after blow, concealing his finger's motions behind his back, not letting the terminator spot Leonivich open the little compartment inside his ceramite boot and slip something out. Leonivich's whole face was sticky and warm with blood when the terminator grew bored.

"Back to your pen until the eighty-eighth!" roared the heretic, leaning down to lift Leonivich, clutching his neckpiece.

Jumping up to give him extra height, Leonivich reached his bound hands around, turning his body just enough to give him space to reach. The heretic beat Leonivich to the floor again, but lifted an armoured hand to his neck in surprise.

Melta-breachers were reserved for officers and usually meant to breach locks in case they ever got captured. This particularly rare design was magnetized and small enough to hide in his boot. Three little round charges no bigger than a bolter shell lit up red, then shot harsh energy beams through the heretic's throat. The terminator's tusked helmet crashed down from his hulking form and oily smoke oozed from the hole it left. The armoured corpse crumpled down. Despite the pain, Leonivich remained vigilant. The crashing down heretic had made some noise, enough to reach the monastery gateway. Yet, the spirits had kept the others inside from hearing their comrade's demise.

"Sink into the abyss," Leonivich cursed to his victim, spitting out a tooth. He slammed a link of the chains on his wrist over one of the terminator's many armour spikes. With some strain, the chain was weakened enough to snap. Though such chains existed to bind space marines, the Bloodlords had not expected to ever have to bind a space marine on their own home planet. Lucky. Perhaps the spirits had helped him again.

Leonivich worked his ankles free and turned to start down the mountainside. He turned back around and gripped his helmet. With a wrenching, twisting effort, he worked his stolen helm free. It had a hole in its scalp, but it still fit. He would have to activate his locator once he was further from the enemy, in case they could detect it.

The shark disappeared into the shadows.

* * *

Somewhere in Eastway…

A lorry burned. The Vandalian troopers who had been aboard lay in pieces around the wreckage. Some of their dead faces wore open-mouthed expressions of pain and horror.

A trail of deep footprints led from the site, across the barren dirt plain.

A madman in battered grey astartes armour strode at the head of those tracks, making new ones on his meaningless stride through the dirt. His hate was so terrible, so deep that anyone who came close to him would feel the bite of his chainblades.

The smashed, rotting head of battle brother Aetheus bounced from a rope tied around the madman's waist.


End file.
